Life, death, time, and other questions [my] kids ask

So much of what I write in this podcast is in response to something inside me, or that I observe. It percolates within me and then I pour it out. 

This week I asked my kids, out of curiosity, what they thought I should write about. Middle suggested Dia de los Muertoss.Eldest suggested with absolutely sincerity: farts.

Don’t worry, I couldn’t and wouldn’t serve up 25 minutes about flatulence. But it also isn’t my place, as a foreigner living in Mexico, to purport to be any kind of expert on Dia de los Muertos. 

But I did get to thinking about what it means that I asked them, and about all the questions they’ve asked me over the years, but over this past week in particular. 

So with that in mind, here is “Life, death, time, and other questions kids ask.”

Here goes,

I figured out a long time ago that the real reward of parenting is explaining the world to my kids. I can almost get past all of the body maintenance of feeding them, cleaning them, dressing them, and schlepping them places if I focus on the delight I feel when my kids ask me a juicy “But why?”

I’m not talking about the “but why?” they sling at me when I say they can’t watch TV at 8 am or eat sticky candy that’s already brought us to the dentist too many times. I’m talking about the questions that arise when a kid realizes they’re joining the world and need an orientation about another aspect of how it all works. 

I remember having a version of this myself as a kid. After years of consuming a variety of fairy tales, children’s books, movies, and TV I started to notice narratives that I couldn’t connect. How, for instance, I wondered could France be the country of the royal Eleanor of Aquitaine and “Liberty Leading the People”? And where did that Napoleon guy come into the story? And how come the French and English were always enemies when it came to battlefields filled with knights and horses but when the time of tanks and trenches came they were Allies? I just didn’t get how it all fits together, and I remember asking my mother to piece it together for me.

Maybe because I remember so well that feeling of having encountered many things but not being able to synthesize them that I enjoy so much these conversations with my kids. 

I remember the first time I was asked one of these big questions as a parent. My eldest, now almost ten and then probably about three, asked me one night at bedtime: “Mama, how come you got hair on your gina?” 

“Well, now that’s a good question. It’s one of the changes that happen when a body grows up: you get more hair in some places, and your shape changes in different ways like getting hips and breasts.”

I could tell she was following what I was saying but was troubled. “What do you think?” I asked her.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” she asked. 

“Well you know how your body has changed from being a little tiny baby to the big kid you are now,” I said, not fully capable of imagining of how very tall and lanky she would yet grow in the coming years. “It’s the same thing when your body changes from a child to a grown up. It happens slowly as you sleep. And other than a few growing pains it doesn’t hurt.”

Her face softened: “Oh good.” she said. “I was worried that to become a grown-up you’d bleed red blood.”

I laughed, knowing it wasn’t the moment to broach the topic of menstruation, but feeling like we’d both done good work, and that we’d pick it up again sometime.

So this has been my approach for the past ten years of parenting, and it’s gotten me through many otherwise dreary years of relentless feeding, cleaning, and hustling. 

I’m writing this the week after Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, and Daylight Savings Time, which is to say this past week I’ve gotten a lot of juicy questions. 

Why do Mexicans have Dia de los Muertos but not Halloween? Someone asked the other day in the car. 

Why do we change the clocks? Another kid asked in delight after learning we weren’t an hour late for school as she’d feared.

And the kicker: What happens after death? 

In many ways, these three questions represent the three different categories of answers I have. 

//

I. The first, to me, is a question that invites an answer that expands the question. By that I mean, I try not to focus just on this question of the two holidays and where they’re celebrated, but rather to expand their observation of different cultural practices to point out commonalities in the process of layering and blending traditions through moments of cultural conquest. 

So I start big picture: humans have been moving and blending groups and cultures since the beginning of time. 

Then I step forward just a bit: and almost always there’s a more dominant group that tries to take over the other group, but they can’t just get rid of the other group’s beliefs because that would make the other group too sad and even angry. So they blend things so that maybe the dominant group’s ideas are the official story but they keep the unofficial stories and traditions of the old ways. 

Then before everyone has completely glazed over I ask a question: Can you think of any traditions that have an official story but also some unofficial elements? 

Immediately a kid responds: Easter! 

Yes, I’ll say. Tell me more! 

Well, Easter is about when Jesus died and came back. 

But, another kid will jump in, it’s also about chocolate and bunnies and chicks and flowers.

Yes! I’ll say. And what do those baby animals have to do with the Jesus story? 

That might stump them for a minute. So I’ll try another question: The people before Christians paid a lot of attention to what?

Someone is then bound to pipe up with: Nature?

Yes, nature. Everywhere in the world there are these traditions about nature and the cycles of nature, how they change, and how they remain constant. So when the Christians spread their understanding of God and the creation, they put it in terms of nature that people could understand, while also laying on top all of the names and stories of the Bible, so people could celebrate the return of life in Spring with the idea of Jesus returning to life. And the same thing with nature appearing to die down heading from fall into winter, right?

Of course, kids are smart. They know when I’m straying too far from the topic. 

Yeah well, that might make sense with Easter and Halloween, but what does that have to do with Dia de los Muertos and Mexico? 

But I’m not done with the big picture yet. Ok but you’ve got to remember the way groups spread their ideas changes over time and places. So the way Christains moved from the place where they began in the Middle East to different places in Western Europe versus Central Europe and Northern Africa is different–each of those places has had a different experience of how Christianity blended with their traditions. Then about 500 years ago, western Europeans started traveling the world to trade but also really aggressively seeking power.

Like the Spanish. The eldest says.

Exactly, like the Spanish. But also the English, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and others. So those Europeans brutally took over many parts of the world, putting themselves in charge and bringing their religion. But: the beliefs and languages and cultures of many of the original people has remained. What’s our town here in Mexico called?

The most confident Spanish speaker gets there first: Santa Maria Tonantzintla. 

Ooh it’s a Spanish saint’s name and an indigenous name! Her sister pipes up. 

Right. But then what’s the name of our town in Maine?

Finally, the little one can answer a question: Topsham! He grins.

And is that a Spanish name? Or an indigenous Mexican name?

No, all three agree. 

That’s right. Topsham is a town name from England. And our part of North America is called New England because the English took it over.

And they didn’t even keep the Native American name, came the indignant eldest. 

True, though you can hear Native American names in what we call many rivers like the Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot, Aroostic, Allagash. Ok so what was your original question?

Why do Mexicans celebrate Dia de los Muertos and not Halloween? Middle child reminds us. 

OK, so why do you think Mexicans celebrate Dia de los Muertos and not Halloween? I ask.

Well, Halloween is maybe an English tradition that blends the old nature traditions and Christianity… says eldest.

And Dia de los Muertos is the blend of old Mexican culture with some of the Christianity the Spanish brought… says middle. 

But we celebrate both! Says youngest. Because we’re from Maine but we live in Mexico and we love trick or treating and having an ofrenda. 

And that’s more of that constant mixing and blending that happens because since the beginning of time humans have moved around. I said, pleased that we were just pulling into the driveway. That wouldn’t–couldn’t–be the definitive word on the brutal history of European domination in the Americas, but it was a start. 

//

II. The question about daylight savings time didn’t go so well. Turns out it’s one of those concepts that I get, just about, but could not figure out the way to articulate it to eldest. There wasn’t such an elegant narrative thread that I can recall and recount to you, but it went something like this:

Well in the beginning humans didn’t need time, because life simply responded to light and darkness and weather. But over time there became reasons…so time was invented…like sundials…and hourglasses. But then the trains. Because noon in Bristol is 5 minutes after noon in London, so trains…and noon in New Yorks is different than San Francisco. Except there’s sun noon and train noon. 

So the farmers cared what time it is for the trains?

Well no, because plants and animals still don’t give a shit about clocks, it’s just about light and darkness and weather.

So if it wasn’t the farmers it’s because of the trains?

Yes. Well but also the school children. And there’s still the same about of light, it’s just earlier in the day. Except well before the solstice there’s less light, and then more after it, except the other solstice there’s more light before and then less light after and so the sun is different than the clocks and time zones are different than standardized times, except in China where they’re all on Beijing time. 

And around there I gave up.  We’ll look it up on YouTube, I said. I should have started with that. But hey, I thought, maybe it’s ok that they see I don’t have all the answers. 

//

III. Then question three was asked at the edge of the candlelight of our ofrenda. What happens after death? 

Some questions, I’ve learned, are asked not for my answer. Some questions, I’ve learned are asked because an answer is already in mind.

What do you think happens after death? I echoed.

I think it’s really peaceful. Just a place of peace and warmth and your favorite people. Said eldest.

With all of your pets alive again. Said middle. 

And maybe the dinosaurs are there too? Said youngest.

I mean I think it’s like Coco, said eldest. The whole family is together. But no one is fighting. And everyone’s bodies are young and healthy. 

Yeah but the pets aren’t just bones because you want to stroke them, insisted middle. 

I don’t think it’s a scary place. But I think if you’ve been mean your whole life in death you’re alone and you’re not happy. 

It’s something we humans have wondered since the beginning of time. And I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure. But I do know we’ll all find out in the end. I finally said. The candles flickered on the ofrenda. Someone slurped from their still-too-hot tea, and I munched a cookie. 

We’d set the cookies out in the middle of the ofrenda because we thought both Grandad on the left and Myna on the right would enjoy them. Grandad’s side also had some tea and a gin and tonic, whereas Myna had coffee and red wine. I wondered if they were visiting us tonight, and if they were what they thought about it. Neither side of the family has any Mexican heritage. Myna, a French and Scot-Irish staunchly anti-Catholic US American, never seemed much interested in an afterlife, thank you very much. I’m less certain how Grandad who was my husband’s grandfather, viewed the afterlife, but I can’t imagine what he’d make of being called back over to this side by a trail of cempasuchil petals only to find himself in Mexico, sharing a plate of cookies with my equally confused grandmother. 

Maybe I was too stuck on the logistics and cultural hang-ups of this life to accept the possibilities of the spiritual plane–though the emphasis on food and beverage on Mexican ofrendas does seem to invite comparisons to real life. I decided, like daylight savings time, to relax my mind just enough to accept it, without being able to articulate or rationalize it. 

My grandmother used to say: The only constant is change. And she’s right. Humans have always moved, blended, and layered our lives, and cultures. I wonder if the peace of death is the acceptance of this. I wonder if our ancestors continue to visit the living from their realm if they are the least concerned with the complexity, or the seeming incongruity, of life on earth. 

And perhaps this is one of the gifts of children, before they’ve been fully integrated into the world of the living. They can hold without much conflict the concept of these layers. My middle daughter doesn’t seem to notice that before last year we never celebrated Dia de los Muertos. But now it’s a part of her in a way I don’t think will ever leave her. And I found a question arising in my heart: How will I be remembered when I am an ancestor? Will I be beckoned year after year by a bridge of cempasuchil? Who will orient me to the world after this world? Will it be my mother again? Or my children? Or will the work of that next time be the work of releasing all orientations? 

///

I’d like to end with a short piece from Aaron Freeman that I first heard many years ago on NPR. 

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.