Explaining How the World Works

As my grandson and I go on our various adventures, I often explain things along the way. He’s just a year and a half old, so I try to keep it simple. ‘There’s someone on a bicycle. This red pick-up truck is parked here.’ And, being a teacher, I’ll often give him little quizzes to see how much he understands. ‘That’s one of the front wheels. Can you find another wheel?’ Mostly, he doesn’t react to my narrative, nor respond to my leading questions. Of course occasionally, to my amazement, he does. ‘Go get that puzzle piece across the room and bring it here so we can finish the puzzle.’ It may just be the context or the finger that points across the room or the random correlation of all things in the universe, but sometimes he appears to know what I am saying.

But I know that he is always listening and I trust that even my baroque explanations of how plants metabolize sunlight into sugar and other such mysteries do indeed lodge somewhere in his wondrously developing brain. His great grandmother who died six months before he was born taught me that. Her name was Sylvia Blacker and I had the great privilege of knowing her for a number of years before she died. I treasure many memories of her great forthrightness and fierce love. She was, till the last moment, full of life.

Melissa and I kept her company during her final week of life as she found a way to accomplish her final disappearing act. We had rushed up to her home, in Milton, MA one Friday night after getting a call from the Hospice worker who said the end was near. We arrived in time to talk with her, but she was clearly not ready to die so the weekend turned into the days of the next week. Melissa’s brother and sister-in-law arrived shortly after us. We all camped out in their childhood home house and did our best to keep her comfortable. She was so happy to see us but as the days went on, she began to talk less and less. By the third or fourth day she was rarely responsive.

One day, mid-week, someone was talking about her in her room as if she wasn’t there. Having read that people in comas sometimes report a keen awareness of what is going on in the room around them, I said ‘You know she can hear everything we say.’ At that point Sylvia, who had not talked or responded for several days, opened her eyes and said: ‘You bet I can.’ She then closed her eyes and went back to her internal processes. We were shocked and delighted. It was typical Sylvia. She died several days later, slipping off while Melissa, her treasured daughter, and I were out for a walk. But I’ll never forget her words.

So spending time with my grandson, I assume that he understands my words whether he chooses to respond or not. It may be that the sound of my voice is the full communication. It may be that his wildly pumping little heart is receiving the coded messages from my wildly pumping big heart. I do my best to be a gracious host to this visitor who has come from some unimaginable distance to stay here with us for a while.