Existentialism for Pre-Schoolers

If you read this blog regularly, you know that we have had some unfortunate experiences in the last few days (and I'm not even talking about both Rebecca and me losing our cell phones on consecutive days). While Jonah has continued walking around oblivious to just about everything around him that isn't candy or ice cream, Maya has cornered Rebecca with some serious existential questions.

A few weeks ago, when Maya and I were in the Museo de Banco Central, we looked at an Incan burial chamber. We got to talking about sacrifice, life after death, and God and I tried to explain it all by comparing God to Santa Claus. Well, I've invited everyone's favorite guest blogger, Rebecca Eichler, back tonight to illustrate that kids have long memories.

I'm not sure which is harder, dealing with the consequences of having your wallet stolen and the emotions of losing a loved one, or trying to answer a 5 year-old's questions about those things.

On Sunday, as we all stood a bit baffled by my slashed purse, Maya kept asking me why someone would do such a thing.

"Because there are bad people," I said.
"Why are people bad?" she asked.
"Well, sometimes people are just bad and do bad things, and sometimes people have to do things that are bad for others because they have to, like if they're poor," I tried to answer.
"Why are they poor?" she asked. Wow. They're poor because they don't work hard enough. Because they're born into poverty in a country that doesn't have many opportunities based on the color of your skin. Because hundreds of years ago their people were exploited for their gold. Because today their people are exploited for their bananas and oil. Because the world is an unfair place. Trying to explain the inequities in the world wasn't what I was up for at the moment, so I mumbled something about how fortunate we were to come from Virginia where everyone is quite rich compared to many people in Ecuador and the people and the government have lots of money to do lots of things.

This obviously didn't satisfy Maya because 20 minutes later she asked, "Why did someone steal your wallet?"

Later in the evening, when we received the news of my grandmother's death, I had the added challenge of trying to explain death to a 5 year-old. "Why did SciPoPo die?"

Fortunately I was at Maya's school the day the class rabbit died and got to hear her wise teacher, Mrs. Bradley, explain death to pre-schoolers, so I was somewhat prepared to answer. I told Maya that SciPoPo was very old and had done all the things that she was supposed to do in life and that it was her time to die. This was about as much as I could remember from Mrs. Bradley's discussion with the kids, so I threw in some stuff about all the great things that SciPoPo had done. I told Maya that she had had six children and we were alive because SciPoPo had PoPo and PoPo had me and I had her. That seemed to satisfy her somewhat, until about 10 minutes later when she asked, "Why did SciPoPo die?" (Lest you get the impression that Maya is dense, I think it's normal that 5 year-olds ask the same question over and over again, especially for abstract concepts. She did the same thing when the rabbit died and the school chicken was eaten by a fox. Mrs. Bradley could explain why this is, I'm sure.)

Something I had told Maya during the evening must have stuck in her mind because when I was putting her to bed, after again asking "Why did SciPoPo die?" she asked me, "Mommy, how did the first person get born?" Now that I was not in the least prepared to answer. I told her that we don't really know because nobody is alive now who was around then, but that some people believe we came from animals and some people believe that God made the first man from mud ("Yuck!") and then made a woman from him. I told her that there are lots of other things that other people believe but that I didn't know all the stories and that we'd look it up in the library when we went back to Virginia. She seemed somewhat satisfied by this, but then said - genius that she is:
"How did the first animal get born?" It was getting late and my brain wasn't working so well so I said that when the earth started there were some bugs that turned into animals that became people. I was thinking about the cartoon movie at the Museum of Natural History in DC where the bugs that live in the water make the move onto dry land. Thinking about it now, I realize they were some sort of fish, not bugs.
"But how did the bugs get there?" Oh my god! Go to sleep! was what I wanted to say, but instead I told her that different people believe different things, but that I believed that maybe there was some magic from something, maybe God, that put the bugs there.
"But how did the earth get made?" Again, I said something about how some people believe it was God and other people believe there was a big explosion that made the earth and the moon and the sun. I told her that these were three really good questions and that people spend their whole lives trying to figure them out. It made me wish that we were religious because I'd have an easier time answering these Big Questions.
She didn't quite seem satisfied by my feeble attempts to explain the World and Everything In It and then said she had a fourth question: "Is God like Santa Claus?"