Eternal Riddle

‘Mom, what does this mean?’
Jason ran into the kitchen holding a notebook and pointing his finger to something written on the page. Laura took the notebook from her son’s hands and took a closer look. She knew that handwriting, and that notebook. The handwriting was hers and the notebook was something she cherished a lot, something quite similar to a diary. A diary where she not only kept track of events in her life, but also kept track of her feelings, thoughts, plans, ideas… she wrote everything down, hoping some day she would learn from her own mistakes. She took a closer look to the sentence her son was pointing to and chuckled. ‘An eternal riddle that smiles devilishly to your face.’

‘Where did you find this?’ Laura asks Jason, even she forgot where she put this away. Jason looks down, and it takes him a few seconds to answer.

‘I found it on the attic. I was trying to find Julie’s old workbooks to copy my homework from her and this notebook was there. I thought it was hers and could be my homework, but it confused me only. So, I wanted to ask you if that’s it.’

Laura chuckled as her son turned slightly red, from the embarrassment. ‘No, it’s not. And you shouldn’t try to copy her homework, but do your own, alone. Don’t make me check on you every time you’re doing it.’ she says in a slightly sharp voice, the voice parenthood teaches you. Jason apologized, but before he went back to his room to do the homework he asked her once again ‘Mom, what does that sentence mean?’ with a face of a clueless seven-year-old. Which is exactly who he is.

Children are an endless pool of questions, and sometimes you can’t have a proper answer for them. How do you explain to your kid that sentence simply describes people? Yes, you can reply simply that the sentence is about people. But, what are you supposed to say to all the questions that come right after it – What do you mean? What kind of riddle? What’s a devilish smile? And all those whys that will come after each and every question. You don’t tell your seven year old kid that one way or another – people turn out to be huge bastards. You don’t shatter the dreams and hopes and illusions of a poor little child that’s done nothing wrong. Not yet, anyway.

So Laura just smiled and said those words every parent uses when he knows not what to say ‘You’ll figure it out on your own. Someday’ and smiled down to Jason. He looked disappointed and sad, after all, he hears those words all the time. Maybe, just like homework, he has to do that on his own. And so he shrugged his shoulders and went to his room. Laura watched him leave and closed her eyes, glad that she didn’t have to explain the toughest life lesson to her son. No matter how hurtful the lesson is – people have to learn on their own, when the time is right. And Jason’s time is yet to come, in many years. Time for that eternal riddle with a devilish smile and time for all those other things he was curious about that ended in ‘you’ll realize it once you grow up’. For Jason, growing up couldn’t come any slower, since all he wanted was to find all those answers. Curiosity. Laura, on the other hand, hoped he won’t have to find out anytime soon and that he would stay a child for as long as possible. Experience.