What Missy Did

It had long been decided that the day was going to happen, but it was far too soon for me that it arrived. This was because, despite personally engineering the day’s activity, I didn’t really want it to take place. I was terrified of snakes since I could remember, and now my boyfriend [future husband] Bill and I were driving six hours south to a snake dealer near Lake Isabella, CA. There, on our way to our annual camping trip in Death Valley, a juvenile rosy boa constrictor was waiting for me to become its mom. As crazy as that might sound, this is what I wanted. Sort of? Or I hoped it was? Or what was going on, Stephanie, have you lost your mind?

No, my mind was fine. I was going with an idea I had incubated over many months, one I couldn’t know would work, but which I was willing to try. I had decided that anything would be better than my abject phobia of snakes. I liked to nurture things, so I thought perhaps I might be willing to desensitize myself around a creature that was utterly dependent on me.

I’d already worked on being able to be in the same room as a snake, thanks to my future father-in-law’s herpetological bent and caged slithery pets. Through the gradual use of his writhing beloveds, I was eventually able to hold one for minutes at a time. I was so proud of myself and wanted to continue to work at ridding myself of this burdensome, heart-hijacking phobia for good. What I’d heard folks were able to do with their fear of flying, I wanted to do with my fear of snakes. I was determined, if not exactly looking forward to it. This was all before the internet had taken off, so back then we sort of winged these kinds of things with minimal info. Which means, I didn’t know what I was doing.

The rosy boa is one of the slowest moving of the snakes, so it was a perfect choice for me—not that any snake would ever be ‘perfect’. The rosy boa doesn’t get too large and is basically a very chill kind of reptile. This was the best it was going to get for me as a snake mom, so we drove for hours to a guy who had one for sale. That six-hour drive wasn’t a road trip of merriment. I spent a fair amount of time looking out the car window thinking of possible exit strategies as a pet owner down the road.

I could always sell the thing. Or donate it? Would a pet store take it? Accidentally leave the cage open in a faraway forest . . . . ?

Fear is when lightning becomes your skin and thunder becomes your blood. We’re built to be elite reactors to fear. We’re such naturals at it that we won’t stop doing it—fear—if we get enough practice at it. When this happens, the fear displaces the good in life that can be lived instead, which is a loss because time is so precious. We all displace the good stuff with the fearful stuff at some point in our lives, for some amount of time regarding some issue or other. It happens. The trick is to try to do it less and less, rather than more and more.

As you know, all fear isn’t created equal. There are some very dire and fearful situations for folks out there, and these call for crucial support, treatment, compassion, and change.

But there is another kind of fear that isn’t as thunderous as what you produce from danger. It’s the habitual kind regarding something not so dire, but which nonetheless gears us up for ongoing struggle. For example, here’s one: I fear that I might be met with rejection from others, so sometimes I fail to act or fear to speak. Two things are at play here. One is the universal need to be accepted. The other is my self-limiting belief that I’m not up to snuff. All of this colludes to give me the red light. At times I see this in play. At others I’m oblivious. I know this fear impacts me, but it doesn’t have to be this way, even if it is so human. There are ways to hack this thing we do to ourselves, on a personal level and even a broader, organizational scale.

Somewhere along the way I developed a fear of snakes. Most likely, it was an organic development of a common cultural fear by a girl who worried about things sometimes. Whatever the case, I came to be phobic of them, and I wanted out of this fear. I knew things had to change. It was hindering all the things I loved to do in the out-of-doors. The long and the short of it: I didn’t like that a fear had so much control over me, especially since I knew that most snakes were innocuous. The thought that I could work my way through this was akin to winning the lottery in my mind. I wanted to be so lucky. I also well understood that if I made my own luck I’d win.

I don’t remember most of the meeting with the snake dealer near Lake Isabella, but I do remember what it was like to hold my new snake for the first time. She was quite small and thin, and she did indeed move around my hand very slowly. There were no sudden jerks or wriggling around. She was very kind to me in that way, and I did feel appreciative of this way about her all the years we were together. I decided to call her Missy, a play name Bill called me from a silly happy banter we’d have together. This snake became a symbol of my willingness to make the effort to be free and happy.

Suddenly I feel sad having to write the following statement to you, but it is the truth: I never did like Missy the snake. That’s sad to me, all these years now passed, as I’m older, and see things in retrospect. We want our pets to be loved, don’t we? But, alas, Missy was never loved. I did take very good care of her, however. That I did.

She lived with us for eight or nine years. She rode in our U-Haul as we moved from California to New York City. She lived in my graduate school art studio in her small glass aquarium, a little native desert beast living in the big city. I’d give her live feeder mice that I either bought from pet stores or live-trapped myself. Lots of free mice in NYC, I tell you. Placing live mice in front of their demise was as bad as you can imagine. Murderous. Feeding unlucky rodents to a reptile that I didn’t really like seemed the height of heartless. But I did it, and I own it, and Missy was sure over the moon about it every single lip-smacking time.

Squeak! Squeeze. Slurp. Gulp. Yum.

I’d walk away mortified, covering my eyes in agony, pleading with the rodent gods to spare me one day, and I won't be surprised if they don't.

Eventually, Missy moved with us to Virginia and hung around through the births of both of my sons. She settled in for a life of teaching my boys not to be scared of snakes, something I was hellbent on, of course. Then one day she mysteriously died. I was told that Missy was accidentally dropped when I wasn’t around. She died shortly afterwards. I’ll never know what happened.

What I do know is that the painter who was painting my house at the time had the most awful sort of body odor you could ever imagine when he walked past me on one of the days he was working. I thought something was seriously wrong with the fellow. That is, until I smelled that exact smell later that night after he’d gone for the day. I happened to be standing near Missy’s cage, and immediately it hit me. It wasn’t the painter who stank. It was Missy. There inside, she lay motionless. She was gone. She was only a child by snake standards. What goes down in history is that even in her short life, Missy the snake gave someone a huge gift.

That’s what Missy did.

All these years later I still don’t like snakes. However, so much has changed regarding my feelings towards them. I never would think about killing one if I saw one now. I no longer see them as terrifying monsters. They’re creatures making their way. I can walk by one or weed near one and not be mortified. I’ll even squat down and take photos of them if I can, which is so far from what I’d have done decades ago.

And that’s what I did.

I don’t have many photos of Missy, but my mother-in-law took a few pictures of me holding her in California before we moved to the East. I was a little older than my kids are now. Missy is draped over my fingers, still quite small, and I look proud.

When I think about it, I did such a courageous thing when I was a young person. I wonder what I can learn from that girl now. I wonder what the two of us would say to each other today if I met up with her. I know I’d ask her to tell me what it feels like to tackle such a hard thing inside of you. Would she look away for a moment in thought? Would she look back and tell me the story I don’t fully recall? I know without a doubt I’d look into her eyes and tell her she was darned awesome. Maybe I’d walk away and commit to being a little more like her myself. Maybe I’d turn back and say, “Thank you for everything.”

For sure I would.