Wooly Mammoths

So, the thing is... it's pretty great being married to a wooly mammoth.

My neighbor Joanne went to the beach recently and she brought me back the coolest thing. It's called a "mermaid's purse." It's this tiny black thing that looks a lot like a little drawstring purse and functions as a protective case for fish eggs. There are little tendrils found at each corner extending out several centimeters which allow the case to grab hold of seaweed and remain attached until the fish is fully developed. Inside each purse, an embryo forms, similar to the way a chicken grows inside an egg. When the little fish is ready, it squirms out of the purse and starts life in the ocean. I'd never even heard of such a thing before but I got the funniest feeling when Joanne handed it to me. It was just weird to be holding a physical manifestation of a mother's hopes and dreams for her young -- even if that mother is a fish. I've always been in awe of the way humans have evolved to carry and care for our young. It was a very strange realization that we're not so different from FISH in our efforts to protect our offspring. (Plus, who knew fish could accessorize?)

I started thinking about how we humans always assume we're superior to animals and how we're not really all that far removed from other species when it comes to certain basic instincts. I mean, we humans are so busy denying our more barbaric instincts (well, except for those people who succumb to road rage) that we dismiss them ALL. But you know, not everything primitive is uncivilized. I think the instinct to protect and save our loved ones is one of the greatest assets we have.

Here's a recent example: One rather cool Saturday in May, I decided that it would be a good idea to introduce Smiley Jane to the fine art of finger-painting. Ana was begging me and I figured the kitchen floor needed mopping anyway so what the heck, how bad could the mess be? (Famous last words.) I cut two long pieces of butcher paper and spread them along the kitchen floor. Then I got the finger paints out and poured a dollop of each color along the strips of paper. Ana, a veteran finger painter, was using her paintbrushes to mix the paint into new colors. JANE, on the other hand, had such a look of wonder and joy on her face that I laughed out loud. She sat right down on the paper and put her feet in the paint. Then her hands. Then she scooted along, pushing the paint along with her little bottom. Then she walked all around the kitchen, very carefully, so as not to slip while leaving handprints all along the kitchen cabinets. She rolled on the floor. She made sounds of great enthusiasm. She rubbed her hands in her hair.

Once I put the video camera down, it was clear that heroic measures were in order if I was ever going to clean up the mess. I stripped the kids down, put them in life vests and told them they could play on the stairs of the hot tub, which I heated a bit so they'd stay warm. My husband, who was recovering from a bad cold/flu sat down to watch them while I ran back inside for towels and to do a quick clean-up of the kitchen. It wasn't even five minutes later that I was stepping out onto the back porch and I saw my husband, soaking wet and carrying a wailing Jane. Something had gone horribly wrong. My heart stopped.

She'd gone off the side and he'd had to dive in with all his clothes and shoes on to save her.

He was bleeding from both knees and had smashed his ankle, but he got to her before anything bad happened. In fact, she was so NOT traumatized that she wanted to go right back into the water. Which was pretty cold and did I mention that he had some respiratory virus? And that he was trying to recover in time for the triathlon for which he'd been training? It was so reflexive --just sheer instinct and a total disregard for self that led him to jump in. I always say that he is my hero -- I just never expected to mean it quite so literally.

I was telling some friends about this incident when one of them said that she always wonders if she'll freeze in a moment of crisis when one of her children needs her the most. I doubt it. There is something so fundamental in us that drives us to protect those we love -- whatever the cost to us personally. We forget ourselves in that moment. Every concerned and engaged parent I know would have done just what my husband did.

And it's not just the life and death stuff, either. It's committing to working through the bad times with your partner. Or risking everything to remove your child from a bad situation even if it means going it alone. It's wanting your child's happiness more than your own security. It's saving the last cookie for a tiny Oreo appreciator and taking care of yourself because you know someone is depending on you and making sure the vegetables on the plate aren't touching each other.

Yesterday, Ana took her first walk down the street by herself to deliver a thank you note to Joanne. I stood on the front porch and watched her. What a big girl she is all of a sudden! I guess we watch them walk away from us all of their childhoods, each time a little further and more independent. And hopefully, secure in the knowledge that we're right there when they turn around to look... Or when they walk off the sides of swimming pools.

I heard a story recently about a prehistoric dig near Waco, Texas. It's an amazing discovery; the largest find of this sort ever. So far, they've found 21 wooly mammoths that died from a mudslide that covered them some 28,000 years ago. The skeletons were recovered virtually frozen in the same position the animals were in when they died. But the stunning thing is that in the tusks of the adult mammoths are the babies and juveniles -- the mammoths were trying to save their young by lifting them to safety.

It's such a powerful and heartbreaking image to me. Apparently the adults had made it to safety and then turned around and headed back. Can't you just see the parents panicking as they turned on the shore to see their offspring foundering helplessly? So, they sacrificed themselves in an effort to save their children.

After Jane's attempt to walk on water, I was thinking about those mammoths and how they lived so long ago that even the STARS were different, yet the essential instinct is the same. I know some people will say that this is pure Darwin: we're all animals programmed to perpetuate our species (although it didn't really work out that way for the mammoths, huh?) I think it's more than that anyway. Across all species, across time, across all races and creeds and genders and situations, there is a fundamental drive to protect those whom we love more than ourselves. These days, when just reading the newspaper is enough to make me lose hope that we humans might someday learn to live and let live, it's reassuring to remember that a fundamental instinct of the living is both heroic and selfless. I don't see how evil and brutality can ever win out over that --not over instincts that are prehistoric in origin.

And I like to think that when my husband dived into that icy water after Jane, there was the ghost of a wooly mammoth cradling them both in its immense tusks and lifting them to safety.

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Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (4) and Jane (19 months). She lives in Austin, Texas and she thinks a mermaid's purse sounds like a great idea in which to keep Smiley Jane until she's about 30 years old.