I Stopped Teaching Her
“Mommy. It’s an owl, not a bird,” she says.
“Hmmm.” I say. “Let’s think about that.”
“Maybe we can plant these beans and grow pumpkins.” She says.
“We could try and see what happens.” I say.
Often, I believe answers are overrated.
So much of life’s magic lives in the wondering. In the mind wandering.
So much of life’s learning happens in self-discovery. In one’s own time.
And I try not to take those magical moments from my little ones.
Sometimes, I sit remembering life before Google. Laying long hours beneath the dark sky waiting for the stars to show themselves to me one. by. one.
Until finally they become a sea.
So many questions would come to me as I lay, but I never reached for a phone to look up the answer. Instead, I just stayed, looking up. Lingering in the vast unknownness.
I never ran out of places to let my mind go. The kind of mind-wandering that is light and free and full of possibilities.
I remember long periods of unknowing.
Searching the library shelves at my house for the right lettered encyclopedia. I remember the smell and feel of old book pages and long flippings of text peeking with old grey images. There was something about the physicality of those books trapped in time that made me feel like I was doing something sacred. Something a bit secretive and magical. The anticipation would build as I neared the page I was looking for but in between I’d shove my hand inside quick to stop at the pages that suddenly peeked my interest. There, I’d find something I hadn’t originally been looking for.
“Mom. This centipede looks ‘died’. Maybe we can take care of it.”
“We can take care of things that have died.”
We can.
“Where do you think we should put her?” I ask.
I don’t know how long it will take before she learns all the things that I have been taught.