“You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others…” –Robert Louis Stevenson
When I was 8 my parents gave me “The Book of Questions.” It answered some of the questions I had been asking relentlessly since I started talking as a toddler: Why is the sky blue? Where are the dinosaurs? Where does the snow come from? Why do trees lose their leaves? Why do people cry? What happens before we are born?
I poured over the pages and will never forget the day I got to the last page. The book was tattered having gone with me on forest expeditions or stuffed in my rain-soaked school bag. I still remember where I was sitting when I read the last page. It was the first day of a new school year. I was nervous and excited and took my favorite book to our front stoop. The green paint was pulling away from the concrete on the steps and although it was going to be a warm day, fall lingered in the dawn. I felt comforted by the fact that I was completely encircled by trees and I knew whatever happened that day, I could return to this stoop with my book.
As any book lover knows, when we are invested in the pages of a story, we avoid the last page, and yet we race toward it. As I flipped past the dog-eared pages, I arrived. I expected the answer to the biggest question of all. I needed that clarity on the precipice of a new school year. And the answer is…
More questions, hundreds of them. My mouth was agape. How could this be? The order of the book was question, answer, question, answer, and now I was to be left with hundreds of unanswered questions right as the yellow school bus was pulling up to our driveway. I was furious to the point of leaving the book where I sat and planning never to open it again.
Life went on, and today, standing on the brink of September, I reflect on how many questions this summer generated in our experience as a nomadic family. September marks our 11th anniversary of this journey and yet when people ask me “how,” I know I can’t give them our advice because it is a question only they can answer.
Some new questions that came up this summer:
In the aftermath of the flooding in Northern Italy: What are we doing every day to contribute to, or to quell natural disasters that are becoming more common? Where does resilience come from? What can we do to help? Why do bad things happen to good people?
Awaiting the boys’ return from their first year of university: Who will get off that bus and what will change because of all they have experienced? How will our family dynamic shift? Will we all fit in our tiny Alpine apartment? Why does it hurt so much when our kids move away even though we support them in their leaving? Can my heart handle the near-bursting excitement of their return?
During our nearly month-long family road trip through Europe: Which way do we turn to get to France? Will our big kids’ legs fit in the back of our European-sized rental car? Where will we stay? How do we order coffee? Who will we meet? What do you want to explore? Who are we now? Who will we be when we return? What will we leave behind? What will be carried forward?
Upon returning to the Alps to spend our first-ever August in Italy: How high can we climb? Why is feeling small in nature a good thing yet when we are not in nature, it doesn’t feel as good? What matters to me now that didn’t matter in June? Will it rain or shine (or both) today? How did this tiny village way up in these magnificent mountains become a home away from home?
As Bianca begins her last year of high school/associate’s degree and the boys leave for year two of university in The Netherlands: What will my classes be like? Who will my teachers be? Am I smart enough, strong enough, ready enough? How will it feel to leave again? What is my definition of home and how has that changed?
As parents navigating the changing world of our growing kids: Is traveling still our path? Are we ready for something different? What is our definition of home? Where will we live next month? How will next year be different? If presence is our goal, how do we balance that with all that is happening around us? Why do we have more questions than answers?
I was consulting with a family just yesterday and when they asked me “how to start” the only answer I could give them was another question: “What is your why?” In our experience when we have the “why,” any “how” is possible.
Of course, when I returned to the stoop as my 8-year-old self, my book was there but I was not the same girl that had left that morning. I looked at my book, stubborn as I have always been, and contemplated leaving it to the autumnal Seattle rain I knew was imminent. Instead, I picked it up, dusted it off, and as the screen door clipped my ankle as it closed behind me, I saw the quote on the back cover: “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”– Richard Feynman (an American theoretical physicist and winner of The Nobel Prize in Physics 1965)
And I knew I was not the same kid who left that morning, none of us ever are. I also knew there was no returning to that person or that moment but somehow that didn’t scare me anymore. A readiness flooded over me that can only be attributed to the energy inherent in the asking and that is what I have done ever since.
Ask, Ask, Ask and you shall receive but expect the unexpected by leaning into the future with excited anticipation. This is one thing we can control. The hope we feel welling up inside as we stand on the precipice of September is perhaps the most important of all things.
