Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Big Question

After bedtime tonight, and I'm hanging out with Dear Alex to have our usual wrap-up of the day, and Dear Alex asks: "Daddy, where do we come from?" I'm thinking that I'm going to get off easy on this one, so I answer "mommies. we all come form mommies. everybody has a mommy." Easy.
Dear Alex asks again: "No, where do we come from?" I answer "We are people and we all come from mommies and daddies and we come from love." There - a definitive and right-sounding answer that gives credit to everyone, and adds the magic of love, but that's not what she's looking for. "No, no daddy where do we come from... who made us, who made us?" Oh, that's a different question. A spiritual, cosmological, how-did-we-get-here kind of question. "well," I say, "That's something that a lot of people have a lot of different ideas about, and I don't really know. A lot of people believe that there is a creator, and a lot of people believe that we evolved, but there's a higher power that makes it all work, and some people that believe we just are. That's something called religion, that you kind of sort yourself out by what you believe about that." Alex: "But who made us?" Daddy: "well mommy and daddy made you, and our mommies and daddies made us, so people made us." "Oh," says Dear Alex, "But where did we come from?" (she's not going to give this up)"we just are." I say, "but this is something we can talk about when you get to be a bigger girl, because it's a very good question, and we can talk about it a lot." She asked, I danced, she asked again, and I danced some more - it's a great question, and the directness of her asking it repeatedly was something kind of startling to me - I haven't thought about life and existence from that direct a perspective in a long, long time, and I'm truly not one to dwell on the spiritual - but oh yeah, "Who made us?". I have to give her credit for asking an obvious question that'll make me think for a little while - I haven't really thought about what I believe beyond "we just are" for a very long time. For both of us, I guess it's something to sleep on.

2 comments:

rechal said...

I love Screamie.

Tell her there's a giant cat in the sky, and every time that cat meows, a baby is born.

Anonymous said...

Naw, just tell her Poughkeepsie (sp?). That'll shut her up.