The Cockroach and the Vac

 My mother saw me vacuum a cockroach off the ceiling tonight.

“Is that really my daughter?” she shrieked in amazement. It was not the novelty that I used a vacuum instead of fly spray. It was not that I leapt in one foul swoop nimbly on top of the kitchen bench, wielding the vacuum hose at the same time. No, it was simply the fact that I was willing to run towards the offending creature, rather than run in the opposite direction.

 But then I remembered my childhood filled with shrieks of fear anytime anything with more than two legs came running into the room. It was dual shrieks; hers and mine, a beautiful unison of high pitched voices freaking out. Amid the less than dulcet tones, I learned that the best way to deal with bugs was to get someone else to do the job.

 My father was usually the one honoured with that job. He’d come in, rolling his eyes, take my mother down from her chair and usher the two of us out of the room. He would have a quiet moment with the offending creature and ask it to leave; simple. Where necessary, he’d show us the corpse so he could get some peace. Such was my life as a child.

 And until my divorce, such was my life as a wife.  If it could be done by my husband, then why should it be me?

 But necessity brought me to a new reality. Being a newly single mother of a six year old, I could hardly hide quivering behind her legs and beg her to do the deed. I had to step up. Above all, I didn’t want her learning the same behaviour I had.

 So I pushed through incredibly difficult boundaries. I enrolled in an arachnophobia course at Taronga zoo, to get over my fear of spiders (that’s another blog, soon). And I worked out that a vacuum could be my male saviour replacement. Think about it. It can’t roll its eyes at you or tell you you’re being silly. It does exactly as it is told and leaps into action at the same time you do without saying a word. Then after doing the job quickly and efficiently, you can put it in another room and ignore it ...until next time. Easy!

 My daughter, now twelve, is not afraid of bugs, spiders, cockroaches ...or vacuum cleaners. She calmly raises the alarm when she sees more than six legs. She plays spotter while I run for the vac. We’re a team. It works. The action is seamless and we always get our bug.  It’s a little form of empowerment, but as they say, it’s the little things that count.

I still have a bit of fear, but I manage it. Why? Because I have to; because I want my girl to be fearless; because I can; because I am a Mother Moving Forward!