Tag: scrambled

I’m scrambling an egg for my daughter.
“Why are you always whistling?” she asks.
“Because I’m happy.”
And it’s true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn’t
Have seen it as my future.
It’s partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I’ve come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we’re told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn’t confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here’s your egg.
~C.G. Hanzlicek “Egg” from Against Dreaming.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson

When a grandchild asks a question, it is like a smooth and perfect egg safely in the nest, awaiting the exact moment to open up to breathe deeply of the world.

Sometimes my answer, try as I might, results in broken shell fragments, the insides all scrambled and released too soon.

I’m confounded by my love for childrens’ innocence in a harsh and painful world – I don’t always know the best thing to say when the truth has bits of hard shell in it. I end up telling the truth a bit slant so it might dazzle them gradually.

So I encourage them to keep asking their clamor of questions, and I do my best to answer in a way so they stay hungry for more, filled with truths without being blinded.

So many questions in their minds and mine.
So many eggs to open gently so the truth remains whole.