My Rat Year
According to Chinese zodiac, 2020 is The Year of the Rat. A rat year occurs every twelve years and a wood rat comes only once in a sixty-year cycle.
Here’s what Google has to say about The Rat Year:
“People born in the year of the rat are generally born with the zodiac rat characteristics. They are believed to be very industrious and thrifty, diligent and positive. The Years of the Rat include 1912, 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020, 2032…”
When I was a teenager, I learned from a Chinese calendar placemat in a restaurant that my birth year made me a rat. I was on a hot date in China Palace with Keith, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, and there it was, plain as day, on the placemat…I even moved the bottle of soy sauce to make sure I was reading it correctly and it was indeed clear: 1984, Rat.
I remember thinking how wrong they were….Rats were awful. Not adorable. Not only that, I was terrified of them!
In my younger years, I unknowingly stepped on a dead rat at my grandad’s house out in Walthall county. I can still feel the abnormal density of the rodent underneath my right shoe and the squishy sensation that took months to forget. For me, there was trauma around this whole rat idea.
How could I be a rat?! Teenage me on the hot date in the L.E.I. jeans was disgusted.
But back then, I didn’t know how high the rat ranked on the Chinese lunar calendar. I didn’t know that in Chinese culture, rats are the most diligent and that “people born in a Rat year are thought to be wealthy and prosperous”.
All I knew was that here, rats were nasty as shit, and when I was a little girl, I stepped on one!
According to a website called China Highlights:
“Women born in a Rat year have quick minds and dexterous hands, and are able to learn anything. They are always considerate of their families and friends.“
People born in 1984 are wood rats.
“They are quick-witted, resourceful, and smart but lack courage. With rich imaginations and sharp observations, they can take advantage of various opportunities well.“
Now that I’m a whole adult, I understand what the Chinese mean. I’m totally a rat!
And honestly, although I am very confident in general, I do lack courage.
It’s like how sometimes I know what I want to say, but I don’t want to make things awkward or come off as an arrogant know-it-all. So, I fall back.
Or, there’s an opportunity to apply for a writing residency that would require me to be away for several weeks, and of course, I fear the thought of being away from my family. That, and the fear of seeming selfish by leaving them. So, I don’t pursue the opportunity.
And then there’s a recent real life scenario that involves me being in my kitchen– a few days before Christmas and the new year– making breakfast when I slowly turn around to see the thing I fear most in the world… a fucking rat running in my direction.
It had come out of hiding for food, stayed out too long, and decided to make a run back to its entry point (the opening on the side of the dishwasher) while I was making grits.
See, the thing about rats:
I DON’T DO THEM.
So, when I saw the damn thing, I lost it. Literally hyper-ventilated while standing on the bed. I trembled as I watched my daughters speak lightly about the situation and keep a leveled head; meanwhile, I shook with fear.
My husband knew he had temporarily lost me. And boy, had he lost me. No lie, a sista was gone. Keith looked at me in my state of utter fear– grabbing clothes and crying– knowing I had mentally checked out of our home. A home that we were working so hard to pay mortgage on. Our abode of fond memories had, in my mind, become tainted. Two days before Christmas.
Our family took up residence at my parents’ until things were brought back to code.
We learned that rats were very common; and had various ways of coming into homes and establishing patterns. Our imposter was, ironically, a wood rat.
The thing about this rat… it was clever and, dare I say, loved bread.
The thing about this rat… it had a way of driving us (me) insane, from scratching non-stop at the wood in the wall space where it hid, to coming out periodically unbeknownst to us and leaving “signs”.
The thing about this rat, as long as I didn’t see it, I still had a sense of control over my living space, over my life. Even though there was evidence and I could hear it scratching the wood, I still felt in control of the situation. The moment I saw it, it gained control over me.
The thing about this rat! It nearly ruined Christmas, the holiday season, and was determined to ruin my whole entire life.
I remember when I called my parents and told them I saw the rat and we were on our way over “for the night”. Dad, knowing his baby girl, was like, “Now, don’t let it run you out your house, Cloonie…”
Little did Daddy know, I was mentally out of that house! That house was scorched earth to me! And I had already begun to imagine life in a new home that existed in my mind– one that wasn’t even logical in obtaining at this point in time. Unlike my husband, who was diligent every day in getting the rat out so we could continue life in a home that we were building and investing in earnestly together.
It took some work and an honest look at myself. I even had to stop and reflect on some of the off-putting things I was speaking or doing to avoid the rat, to avoid home.
The new year came and I really started thinking symbolically about 2020 being a rat year. I considered my lack of courage. I did a vision board. And I started changing some mind-things.
Anxiety is a trickster.
Anxiety had me convinced that the only way to cope with the morning report from Keith that the rat “had not taken the bait yet” was to add champagne to my orange juice and sulk.
Anxiety had me convinced that the rodent was my husband’s issue (and low-key, my daddy’s). Not an issue I needed to face.
While I have great empathy for anyone who deals with an anxious and worried spirit, the toll it can take on a spouse or family is real.
And fear?
Fear can easily make you run from things you’ve been absolutely blessed with- a dwelling, a job, school, a relationship, a promotion or relocation opportunity…it can even force you to run away from the season you’re in too soon before the growth happens!
It can force you to start manipulating situations and ordering people to do things so that you can remain content in your anxious and fearful state, so that your only choice in that moment is to stay scared.
But guess what? This year, fear has no choice. Fear has to go! Anxiety has to go!
So that we can live!
Will Smith once said,
“The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real, but fear is a choice.”
In my imagination, I had given the thing I feared capabilities it didn’t even have. I could see the rat coming around the corner, walking down the hall, on a mission to kill me.
In our imaginations, people are trying to attack us, cheat on us, hate on us. We see and hear things that aren’t even there. In our imaginations, people and things are magnified.
The more I reflected on my affair with fear, the more I understood my rat traits and the more I realized that the real issue was within me.
I remember late one night, at my parent’s house, Keith came into the bedroom, laid down, and in an exasperated voice said, “We caught it. It’s dead.”
It had been two weeks since I saw the rat. Two weeks of living in my fear state. And now, it was finally time to go home.
I remember thinking on that long drive from mom and dad’s how much time had passed. Had it really been two weeks? Was I really that fearful?
Not only did I think about how the situation had shaken me, I also considered how it was affecting my Proverbs 31 walk.
How was I going to manage a household when I was afraid and paranoid of being in the house?
Was my fear about to change how I handled my duties and responsibilities in and around my home?
If you get into the research, you will find that fear, for the most part, is a result of our past, lived experiences. When I was a child, I stepped on a dead rat; therefore I couldn’t possibly be the industrious rat that the Chinese zodiac suggested I was. I couldn’t possibly be in a lucky “rat season” or dwell in a house where a rat was.
One thing’s for sure, God knows how to shake things up so much that you are tossed out of your normal state, only to be made better!
God and my husband ushered me back into my home so that I could do something I didn’t think was possible: pick back up where I left off.
As our routine resumed, I continued to reflect on my Proverbs 31 lifewalk:
“She gets up when it is still night; she provides food for her family…”
At night? Before the break of dawn? In the kitchen? Where that “opening” was?
Fear has a strategic design and a way of starting over– regaining momentum when we least expect it.
There I was: back- cooking, cleaning, loading the dishwasher, and raising children in my country abode with the humble wood. Paranoid, but managing.
I was back to watching over the affairs of my home. Interestingly, I was doing it with a more diligent and graceful spirit than before.
How was this possible when I was so afraid?
I’ll tell you how: Because on a Monday evening, I stepped nervously out of my vehicle and, with two weeks of clothes and toiletries in my arms, re-entered my home asking God to give me strength.
Now, here’s a moment of truth: Before I went to God, I went to my husband and asked him to change the circumstances. To make it so that the rat never existed and would cease to exist in my mind. I was essentially asking him to give me a reason to not be afraid anymore. While my husband was doing the best he could, it wasn’t fair or healthy for me to ask him to take my fears away. Not only that, it wasn’t his responsibility.
He accomplished a great feat- catch and kill the rat, seal the openings, and bring the home back up to code. He did his part.
The next part was solely on me.
This is where God really showed up. To my chagrin, not even God could eliminate my problem and make life easier. Rather, God was the one who positioned me to face my fears– my troubles– so that I could be that Proverbs woman and release my husband from an expectation that was humanly too large and holistically impossible.
We can all be more courageous in our life-walk. This whole rat saga showed me that there will be times in our lives when fear is so profound, we will not only forget who we are, we will also create new things to be anxious about- “spinoff fears”.
As my story comes to an end, I ask each of you to pause and think: What scares you? What’s the thing that creeps up, likely stemming from childhood, that terrorizes you, possibly affecting those who love you?
What’s your rat?
-Clinnesha Sibley
Clinnesha D. Sibley holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tougaloo College and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Playwriting from the University of Arkansas. She is an award-winning playwright and a published author of plays, poetry, monologues and essays. She taught in higher education for many years at the University of Arkansas and the College of Charleston before focusing on secondary education. In 2013, she received an Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. She was selected as one of twenty-four “change-makers” across the United States for the 2017-2018 National Arts Strategies Creative Communities Fellow Program. In 2020, she received the Arts Institute of Mississippi (AIM) Award for creative writing.