The thinker
Tonight at the dinner table, my four and five months old daughter, Julia, brought up the question of the origin of the species, by which I mean we humans and how we came into existence. We were all a bit dumbfounded by both the nature and depth of her inquiry and how she laid it out in front of us. It went something like this:
So, how is that, that baby, you know the one, who was, like, born but didn’t have a mother and didn’t have a father, or a sister, was born but, like, there wasn’t anyone else, how did that person get born? You know, like the first baby?
I do believe my jaw went slack. We were discussing all the various groups of siblings that we knew, and which were pairs of girls, which were pairs of boys, who had three girls, and so on, when this existential outburst came forth from my youngest offspring. She really was asking about the origin of the first human because when I asked, “Do you mean, where did people come from?” she nodded quickly with eyes wide open. Susan and I looked at each other with big grins and I said, “Now that’s very good question,” to which Julia smiled in delight that she had amazed us yet again with her uniquely perceptive mind. Of course, the answers, as we tried to explain to both the girls, were not entirely satisfactory, as it is a rather complicated subject and a neat and tidy answer does not this question yield (unless one were to stick to religious dogma and proclaim God’s divine intervention as the truth, the whole truth, and blah blah blah.) Nevertheless, we continued to have a very pleasant meal, buoyed by the lofty ideas and important subjects of our conversation.
It has been said before of Julia that she is a thinker, an acute observer of things both large and small, a sensitive little human with an eerie understanding beyond her years. After tonight, more than ever, I continue to believe these things about her. Lily is the leader, the doer of impossible things, and the brave warrior, while Julia is the philosopher, the psychologist, and the peacemaker. They make an excellent pair.
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