Big Questions
Last night as Linus and I were watching the Vikings game on TV, they showed some video footage of downtown Minneapolis that was taken from Nicollet Island. You know how they always show a local scene as they do a voiceover when they come back from break? That kind of deal.
I knew it was Nicollet Island because you could see the Washington Ave. Bridge in the background, and that bridge is in several of Jane and my's wedding photos. We were married on Nicollet Island, in '97.
We have a big black and white picture of Jane and I on our wedding night, with the bridge in the background. Linus frequently tells us it is a picture of our wedding. That's all he's ever really said about it.
But last night, as I mentioned our wedding again, he stopped, turned to me and asked: "Where was I when you and Mommy got married?"
At first I thought he meant something like, "Where did I stay?", or "Who babysat me?", and perhaps that is what he meant.
I considered this question carefully. I could either give him the matter-of-fact answer, or some obtuse thing I hadn't really planned out. I just said "Well, you weren't born yet. You weren't around then."
And he just sat there. I could tell he was thinking hard. He asked again:
"Where was I then?"
I think maybe this second time, he wasn't asking the same question as he had before, though he was mostly using the same words.
I think he was getting at, "If I wasn't here yet, where was I?"
Good question. I simply told him we hadn't decided to make a baby yet. Well, we had, but we were still practicing for having a baby, so to speak.
But that didn't seem to placate him at all. He sat very still for over a minute, something he hasn't done much of lately. He just sat and thought. I don't know what was going through his mind. He chose not to ask another question, and soon enough he was distracted with something else.
What a concept-To not be here yet. These were big questions I didn't know how to answer. You know your kids are growing up when they start asking you questions about things that you really don't have answers to.
I'm sure it's hard for him to understand that Jane and I had lives before he was here, that we had lives before we had each other. But isn't that how it is with all of us? Aren't we always finding out things about parents or other people in our lives that surprise us, that give us a new sense of who they are and of how time wraps us all up and sweeps us along on currents that sometimes chart their own course?
Time. Death. Love. Space. We talk about these things, little by little. You think about the conversations long before you have them, perhaps before you even had children. And you idealize the conversation to the point that you think it's all going to be very formal, that you'll know that on a given night, you're going to have the Death Talk, and you can get your notes in order before the child comes into your Mike Brady study and you give them the facts of life. But of course that's not how it happens at all. They bring it up, or you see something that puts it right at your feet where you have to discuss it. You'll be talking about the most ridiculous things and then they'll drop a bombshell on you about your cat that died a couple years ago, and what does dying mean, anyway?
And you hem and haw and ultimately just try to put it to them straight and matter-of-fact, and you watch them closely for a reaction, to see if perhaps you have scarred them or given them some unrealistic view of the world.
And they just take it in and move on about their day. Maybe it made an impression, and maybe it didn't. It might be years or never before you learn what experiences or things you say to your child at age 4 will shape them as they move on down the current. You just try to do your best and share what you know, and no matter how well you think you've summed up the world for them, you'll probably have to cover the same material a few more times as they continue to have questions about the world.
And you won't be any more or less prepared for it than you were the first time around. And though you feel woefully inadequate sometimes, there's something about it all that just seems to glow. This is what it's like to grow into the world. You remember when you had questions as a child, and you almost wish you could be travel in time, to hear your own questons about the world when you were 4. And you want to move forward, to see how your kids come out, how they'll explain their world to their kids.
You're all a part of the chain. And that's what it's all about.
11:04:02 AM 
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