Mystery in the Morning

Yesterday, we learned “Mystery.”

This is one of my favorite words. See, the Fox found a black plastic handle. Oval shaped, flat, with a hole for a securing screw. I think it was left on top of the kitchen cabinets at some point; I knocked it off while I was sketching a tree on the ceiling. (Not to compare myself to Michaelangelo, but how did he avoid a serious neck crick?)

The Fox held up the handle and said “Dat! Dat!” Which is his way of saying, “At this time, I’d like to politely request an explanation of this item.”

I said “That looks like a handle, honey.”

To which he replied. “Hmm. Do you know what it once was attached to?” (See above for actual language.)

“I don’t know where it came from,” I said.

His eyes lit up like a slot machine that has found its long lost disadvantaged granny. “I don’t know!” he said.

“Yes. I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

“Mystery,” he breathed. (We are talking real words now, by the way.)

The handle and the conversation, over and over, occupied him through the morning, long enough for me to sketch a twisting, knotted branch that arcs over the hall door, down behind the stove, touching the floor next to the deck door and arcing up again to leaf out above the counter on the other side.

This is how live oaks do it. They turn their lower branches into a support structure of buttresses that brace the ground so that they can grow hard and heavy and high. How did they figure out how to do this? Darwin explained it, that I believe.

But I also believe that it’s a mystery.

The handle disappeared at some point, but not the words. I heard him in the car on the way to Trader Joe’s, whispering to himself: “I don’t know… came from… mystery.” I’m not sure if he grocks all that is contained in “mystery” or if it was just the thrill of me saying “I don’t know.” Either way, this is freeing.  For many, many years I felt that certainty was safety. That saying “I don’t know”  – how to do this, where I’m going, who I am at the moment – was shameful. Like being caught with your pants down. Hot, cheeks-burning shame.

It prevented me from leaping for way too long.

So, I’m psyched that he is getting early exposure to the concept. Hey, I figure that if I can demonstrate trying and sometimes failing and having a good time while doing it, and if I can also get him to eat something green once a week, I’m doing okay.

Am going to climb on the kitchen table, now. He’s still asleep and I’ve got a little time. Since I’ve got one supporting branch sketched out, I might as well start on one that reaches for the sun. I’m not sure what it’s going to look like yet, but that’s okay. In the immortal words of Shakespeare in Love’s Geoffrey Rush:

"It’s a Mystery.”