Do you know where all the water pipes are in your house? I know where most of them are in my house — logic would dictate that they have to travel from the main pipe coming in the house to the areas where the water comes out: The kitchen sink, the bathtub, the toilets, etc. And I don’t think it’s any accident that the washing machine is in the basement, directly below the kitchen sink, or that the upstairs bathroom is directly above the downstairs bathroom. To me, it seems clear that when the house was built 90 or so years ago, there was a plan to minimize plumbing costs. But that’s not the way a 3-year-old looks at the world. In Teresa’s eyes, there could be water pipes anywhere. In fact, there probably are water pipes everywhere. And all of them are about to rain on her. Which would be very bad. She started expressing a fear of “rain” (only water coming from a shower or other pipe as far as I can tell; water falling from the sky doesn’t seem to faze her) when we were working on the upstairs bathroom and she had to take a bath downstairs, where there is a removable, handheld showerhead, and I made the mistake of trying to use it to rinse her hair. Once I talked her back into the bathtub, and returned to the tried-and-true method of pouring huge tumblerfuls of water over her head (for some reason, that’s OK with her), she started eyeing the showerhead suspiciously every time she got in the tub and asking if it’s going to rain on her. Then she generalized to the showerhead upstairs, and then to anything that looks like it might possibly carry water, including the pipes holding up the basketball backboards in the gym at Frank’s school, electrical conduit in our back porch, leading to the lights and the outdoor power outlet, even various roof beams and ceiling trusses. In my good-mommy moments, I’m patient and calm, showing how the conduit goes to things that use electricity like speakers and lights, and that water comes into the sink through valves about 18 inches off the floor, so they couldn’t possibly rain on her. In my bad-mommy moments, I want her to just go in the public bathroom at the ice rink, water pipes near the ceiling or no, because it’s the fourth time in half an hour that she’s told me she needs to go potty and then turned away at the door and I’m not at all sure she can make it home. But forcibly carrying her into the bathroom won’t work; I remember from my own childhood being terrified of things that nobody understood and tried to talk me out of, and it never worked. Just because there’s nothing to be afraid of doesn’t mean the fear isn’t real, and barring an absolute necessity, like maybe getting her out of a burning building, all I can do is encourage her to take tiny steps toward overcoming it on her own. Jesus often had to tell his disciples not to be afraid, and he didn’t seem to lose patience — at least not with their fear — so I’ll try to follow his example. Encourage, say “don’t be afraid,” repeat as necessary.