I overheard Mom talking one day on the phone to her friend Bessie. She told Bessie that she was cutting back on expenses because of The Bear Market. She said the market was eating them alive and she needed to save their Nest Egg.

The next day mom asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her. All I could picture in my head was bears. Bears at the checkout counter. Bears behind the deli bar giving out free samples of honey. Bears shopping for underwear. Bears everywhere—even old grizzly bears, tired and grey, wearing badges and guns, standing around to scare would be shoplifters from entering the premises.

I told her, “No thanks, Mom. Think I’ll hang out and do some homework instead.”

“Well, okay sweetie,” she rubbed my hair making my hair stand up. I hated and loved it when she did this, and then it occurred to me. What if the bears ate mom?

“Mom, do you have to go shopping? Why don’t you stay here and help me with my math?” Mom loved math. She majored in it in college but gave it up to major in dad and me.

“Math? You?” She looked truly puzzled. “You could out do me in math any day of the week.” Her eyebrows drew together making little vertical wrinkles up her forehead. “What gives.”

I started to speak and the stupidity of what I was about to say stayed my tongue. Bear cashiers – bears mopping the floor – again, bears everywhere. But then I couldn’t help myself, “Don’t go to the bear market. I don’t want you to be eaten alive,” Somehow I kept from crying, but just barely.

Mom’s concerned look – chiseled forehead frowns, spider web wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, and the way her eyebrows bunched together, suddenly melted.

I expected she would minimize the worry. I expected she would somehow try to make me feel better as she faced certain death in the bear market. I did not expect what she did next.

She laughed.

What an amazing, wonderful woman. She laughed in the face of danger. There were bears everywhere and she laughed. I felt warm and safe for a moment and then it hit me. She was laughing at me.

That thought must have registered on my face as she quit laughing and asked for a quick hug.

Hugs are one of the few currencies a little kid can offer. I ran over and hugged her tight. I paid a fortune in what I knew was one last hug.

“Don’t worry,” she said, again with the hair tousling, “Maybe I can find a cute one to bring home. Besides, worrying isn’t going to make the bear market go away.”

Mom was gone maybe an hour. Did I say an hour? It seemed like months. I was aged from anxiety the way a picked dandelion goes from yellow to a curled up brown thing in short order.

Mom came through the door whistling and generally putting forward a happy attitude. I looked for bite marks and found none.

She set the two bags of groceries she was carrying with her down on the Formica topped kitchen counter and swept me up in an embrace. “My little worry wart, your worries are over. The man on the car radio on the way home said that we are moving to a bull market.”