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Pondering the whys of life
By Christina Quick | January 30, 2008
I wrote this eight years ago. Now 10, my son is still a bright and curious guy — thinking about a whole new set of whys.
“Why do horses have legs?”
“Why does the doctor’s chair have wheels?”
“Why is it daylight out?”
My two-year-old son is a bottomless well of questions. Some of his questions are funny. “Why is that woman shaving our ham?” he asked one day at the deli counter. “Does it have whiskers?”
Others are almost philosophical. One night after I turned out the lights at bedtime, my toddler asked a question adults have been pondering since the dawn of time: “What are we all doing in this great, big dark?”
Others have no good answer. “Why is that an apple?” he’ll wonder aloud.
“It just is,” I reply after trying to think of something better to say.
Most days, I don’t tire of his questions. I remember seeing him watch my shadow move across the wall when he was about seven months old. He would look at the shadow, then at me, as if he were trying to figure out the connection. I wished then I could get a glimpse of how his mind works. Now I have that opportunity.
“Why are my teeth sewn on?” he inquired one day after climbing onto my lap. Before I could answer, he mused further: “My hands are sewn on, too. But my shirt’s not sewn on. The doll’s shirt is sewn on, but mine’s not. Why?”
If I kept a pad of paper and pen strapped to my side, I still wouldn’t be able to capture all the conversations I’d like to remember forever. How quickly they grow. How abruptly the wonderment of childhood is pushed aside by the cynicism of adolescence and the rush into adulthood. The boy with the scraped knee who sits motionless at an anthill will soon swing a briefcase as he hurries past a hundred anthills. The girl with pigtails who goes out of her way to splash in puddles will one day go out of her way to avoid them.
“Why?” my son would ask.
Why indeed?
Topics: Preschool |
