Too many answers, not enough questions

I have an idea that kids need mysteries as much as they need answers. They need unstructured time to ponder the mysteries, to let their questions steep like a jar of sun tea on the front step. Mysteries fuel our imaginations, spur our studies, and add layers of richness to our human experience.

As parents it is often easier to give a snap answer to a child's question than to ask, "What do you think happened?," "What ideas do you have about that?," or "How would you fix that?" We often feel like we have failed as parents when we see our kids lying on the floor staring at a sunbeam, or digging a canal in the dirt with a stick. We rush to enroll the kids in yet another adult-structured activity to "better use their time".

My third grade teacher read a chapter about Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb to the class every day after lunch recess. She was reading a chapter when we learned that JFK had died. My curiosity about ancient Egypt helped me through that difficult time, and I may have linked JFK with the "Boy Pharoah" for several years. I wondered if other tombs and treasures awaited my patient and meticulous discovery in Egypt. I still read both fiction and nonfiction about ancient Egypt over forty years later, even though I didn't become an archaeologist. Maybe it is a romantic notion, thinking that our life is enriched by a sense of wonder about other places, other times, but I think it helps us find both our life's work and our most restorative leisure.

The mysteries that intrigued me as a child were not very scientific or mechanical. They were mostly historical or mythical, with an occasional dose of biology--Atlantis, Knossos, Incas, Easter Island, Odysseus, Roanoke Colony, wagon trains to the West, cave paintings in France, Viking exploration, the Anasazi...butterfly cocoons and praying mantids, family trees. Finding out for myself how many different greens I could mix with a simple set of watercolors, or how many ways I could rearrange a set of square tiles set me off on my path as an artist and teacher. Reading narratives and journals of women pioneers headed west colored the way I look at our modern lifestyle and conveniences.

This week I got to chat with a group of kids about the Anasazi cliff-dwellers of the Four Corners region. The kids had so many great questions. Their brains were really storming! They are obviously aware of hurricanes and flooding, but quickly latched onto the ideas of drought and irrigation. They got intrigued by the ideas of the wearing down of teeth by the sand and grit in the corn flour diet, and of the T-shaped doorways for people carrying backpacks or heavy baskets on their backs. They have questions about why people used to be so much shorter (5' 4"), and only lived to be forty or so. They wondered if cancer killed the Anasazi. They began imagining mesas--teeny tiny people living on table tops! They liked the "camoflague" stone buildings and wondered about how the Anasazi trapped food, and why they grew corn, beans, and squash, because ew-ick they don't like those vegetables. And they loved the idea of standing at the corner of four states.

I intended to tell them about the Wetherill family finding the cliff dwellings in the late 1800's, but I'm still reading a biography of Marietta Wetherill. ...Then I need to read Nebraska author Willa Cather's novel about Mesa Verde, The Professor's House. In about 1964 I read a story in National Geographic, or maybe National Geographic School Bulletin, about Richard Wetherill riding off looking for stray cattle on the mesa and discovering Cliff Palace. The image I created in my mind of that moment of discovery is still there, even though I know it probably didn't happen quite that way. I also have a strong memory that I read the story while lying on the living room carpet with sunbeams pouring through the window. I'm betting I had Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite playing on the hi-fi. I'm thankful that my parents gave me that time to wonder and hear my own questions.

There's are hummingbirds, lizards, and butterflies out on the patio. It's time to do some restorative recreational wondering.