"Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."
-Euripides

Summer is losing out to fall now, I saw the first pale yellow leaves yesterday as I ran along Abbot Street. The Maple leaves are losing their color too, drying out along the edges.

Two nights ago, Iryn (age 5) got out of bed after I'd put her in, and came out crying, saying she was too hot.

"I'm too hot and I can't get my pyjammas off...." then, "What if I'm not real?"

I hugged her. She seemed scared.

"Pardon?" I said.

"What if I'm not real? I'm scared I"m not real." she said.

"Trust me. You're real." I poked her in the ribs with my finger.

I was tired and not in the mood for the philosophical chats that she always seems to initiate before bed, in the dark, when she's WAY overtired. I know all about it. I was exactly the same as a child. Something about the darkness makes you want to know the answers to things you didn't need to in the light.

I rubbed her back.

"I know what you mean. I used to wonder that too."

(I didn't dare mention that I STILL wonder about it now. It was too late at night and she was tired...)

"What helped you?" She asked as we sat on the edge of the bathtub.

"Well..." I thought for a minute. I am so not into the pat answers. But I"m also not into complicating the explanations so that she has no idea what I'm talking about. I don't believe truth is exclusive. It has to be simple, or there's something wrong.

I wanted to tell her about all the things I know now. The things I know in my bones. The things that have become, what author and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg calls "abiding faith". I wanted to tell her that you can test truth in your body. That if it feels bad, something is off. I wanted to tell her that if it makes her afraid, she can dismiss it and know that it's not something she needs to worry about right now. I wanted to tell her that truth feels like warm water or a sunset or like watching snow fall out the window. It rushes through your body and feels healing and spacious, not cold and rigid and frightening.

But how to explain these things to her? I decided to give it a go.

"It's good to ask questions like that." I say.

"Why?" She wants to know.

"Because if you don't ask questions, you end up going through life believing everything everyone tells you, and not everything everyone says is true. Even if they say they know, they might not. You have to find the truth for yourself, and know it inside you. So asking questions is good, because it means you'll find out the truth about life...But when the questions start to feel bad, when they start to make you scared and afraid, when they start to feel too heavy - do you know what I mean by heavy? (she nods) - then that's when you have to open your hands and let them go for awhile."

I have told her before that I sometimes imagine God as a kind mother, and we are all her babies. Iryn likes this image, and she relates to it. It always makes her smile.

"Sometimes you have to let God take the questions and just let yourself be taken care of for awhile. Not worry so much. Do you think you can do that?"

She nods. "I just did." She says.

It gets her to bed.

But afterward, I can't stop thinking about it. She is five, for crying out loud. How do I explain to her that this is a part of what being a human is? Feeling scared, feeling lost, questioning the world, lying in bed at night and wondering if you are real.

.................
This afternoon, we drove across town to the grocery store. Iryn and her little sister were sitting in the back seat. The car was hot and the traffic was heavy. Suddenly, Iryn says: Mom, I keep trying to feel not real, but it's not working. I guess I let it go too good."

I hope to God she'll remember this. I hope to God I will too.

Suddenly, the light is leaving early, too early. After I put the girls to bed I go and sit on the wooden deck on the side of the house. I look out into the sky, into what is left of the day fading into pale colors and orange-edged clouds. There's only a bit of sky, with a few telephone wires in the way, but that's all you need sometimes. Just a place to see the evidence of the day's end. There is an enormous chestnut tree across the alley, and when the sky gets dim, it grows dark and looming, its huge leaves like hands, waving in the breeze.

Every Saturday and Sunday morning, from 7-9am, I have been leading workshops down at the beach where we sit on blankets and journal. It has been wonderful. Today, after the workshop, the girls and I hit the farmer's market and I bought some fresh-baked bread, a bottle of natural body scent spray that smells like blackberry pie and some tiny polished stones for the girls in little hand-made bags.

There was a lovely woman selling lavender products, and I have always dreamed of owning a lavender field, so I asked her: is it as lovely as it looks? She said it was a lot of work, but wonderful work. She told me about how, several years back, her son died, and it shook up her life and made her decide to live it in a different way. She quit her life-long nursing career and started her lavendar company on an acre of property.

Tonight there is noise out on the street. There is some festival going on and tomorrow the park will probably be trashed, scattered with smashed-up bottles and chip bags, stray shoes and cigarette butts. As Iryn said when she was only 4: "Some people just don't know how to take care of the world."

I am inside, with the windows open, trying to learn to play the banjo. Annie Dillard once wrote of writing books that it feels more like sitting up with a sick friend, hoping she will get better. I feel like that about the banjo at the moment. It has taken me nearly 3 hours to figure out how to tune the thing.

Tonight I had a few hours off alone and I rode my bike to the library for a stack of new books. Then I went and sat by the water, my legs dangling over the edge of the wall, as I have done so many tiimes this summer.

.............................