The Doings of David and Peter
III WHAT? HOW AND WHEN?
There is no doubt that David was born with an enquiring mind. From the moment when, at three days old, he lifted his head to survey me with surprised blue eyes over his murse’s shoulder, I knew that I had a problem ahead ~ ~ he was of these who “want to know". As he passed the months of noise and moss, and emerged from the purely animal to the distinct individual, he began to question his environment and, with something of the awe of the scientist watching the development of flower or cell, I watched his dawning intelligence.
‘It was about the middle of his second year that the strangeness of the world was borne in on his infant minds Hitherto he had accepted his home, his parents, his food as part of his natural backgrounds now, travelling afield erect in a pram, he became aware of a world full of unexplained things. The age of questioning had begun. Its first form was that of “What?" “What is that" he asked, and with a chuckle
“That funny thing is?" To me it was like seeing the world anew. Things to which one has grown so used that they are scarcely noticed take on a freshness and strangeness. A tree, a cow, a dog are all “funny things" to the baby mind, and how funny they all seem when seen afresh through his eyes. Others prove curiously inexplicable.
“What's that funny thing?” asked David one day, pointing at the rusty tank which, a relic of the war, still disfigures our public park.
“What's that?" he asked, peering eagerly over the shoulder of the 'meter man' into the little cupboard where live the electric meters.
I stopped to think and, thinking, found that I stood on the threshold of a new country. My world, that I accepted so calmly, was beginning to be questioned, and I had no answers. What were those things, and how could I explain them, I asked myself humbly, as I called the tank "a sort of car", and the meters “things that made mother's stove cook", knowing that only for the moment would these answers satisfy. For, oh so quickly on the heels of the "What?" stage comes the "How?"
Such a few weeks it seemed before David found a simple statement of fact insufficient, and insisted that the subject be followed up. No longer would "a sort of car"'do. “How does it go?" he asked. And, “What does it do?" No longer could I hide my ignorance of the magic that connected the little clock in the cupboard with my batch of cakes. “How does it make the oven hot?" he asked, and followed the line of wires with absorbed interest. ‘This led to the mystery of pipes, and dey after day I told the story of the house's plumbing, and accompanied an eager inspector round the outside of the house to see “where the bath ran away", and what happened to the water off the roof. Plumbing, in fact, occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else.
It was about this time that a local girls’ school announced an exhibition of work by its Juniors, and David and I walked in with a friend. Solemn-eyed, he surveyed it all, refusing to be drawn into approval of gay raffia or modelled houses, of paper-work or home-made toys, and it was not till we passed to the Art Room that his face brightened. Was it the pictures that called up that rapt expression? Alas, no stopping before the steam radiator, he demanded breathlessly:
"Do you know where those pipes go, and what are they for?"
As David passed his third birthday and walked forth in real knickers end braces, even “what?” and "how?" ceased to satisfy, and the period of “why?” began, in the form of, "do you know why?"
If the “How" stage is disconcerting, the “Why” stage can only be called world-shaking. Not only is the mother's ignorance revealed, but she is forced to give a reason for the faith that is in her.
"Do you know why the shops are shut?" asked David.
"Because it is Sunday," I replied, casually.
"Why is it Sunday?" asked David, and I stood appalled. Why was it Sunday? I tried to hedge, but sternly he drew me back to the subject and dragged me along the path of Sabbath observance, its meaning and object, who built the churches and why, to the final stupendous query: “What is God?”
Like many a mother, I had taught Sunday School classes of the seven and eight year olds, but never till then had I faced the very beginning of knowledge when even the elements of religion are unknown, when prayer is a meaningless word, and God an unexplainable mystery. It was then that there came to me, even more than when he lay helpless in my arms, a sense of my tremendous responsibility towards my sons. What I told them now must inevitably form the basis of their future thinking. Did I picture a stern Jehovah, quick to punish a child's offences, that memory could never be effaced; it would live below the surface of their minds into manhood. If I gave them a conception within their grasp of a kind creator, the power behind the growing seed in the garden, the giver of the seed from whence they sprang, would that be a foundation on which religion could be built? Or were the new psychologists right who regarded the teaching of religion as worse than poison? Certainly they spoke with authority, but their alternatives, couched in a jargon incomprehensible to any but the intelligent adult mind, were utterly untranslatable to a baby of three. To me it was startling, it was terrifying, it was overwhelming, this foundation-laying, affecting not only religion but every other aspect of life. Thinking back, I was amazed to find how much I still relied on the answers given me by my parents --- and I remembered, too, with uncanny clearness, those that were not answered, those that had been evaded, that had left me with the feeling of something nasty about the subject.
It gave me time to face up to the things that I had to explain and to prepare for them. One thing emerged clear from my own harassed dictionary searching childhood, that the truth is infinitely less harmful than an evasion, and that the time to tell the truth is when it is asked for. But what a lot of truth David demanded!
Shortly after his fourth birthday his questions led me into paths I had not expected to tread for many years, and physical functions lead to an exposition of the digestive system, a subject which, to my surprise, was received with the thrill of an adventure story. At meal times, or in the middle of a game, I was suddenly asked, with joyful anticipation, to "tell about my tummy sorting up the food." It was difficult to stop there, for question after question led me on.
“What's my blood? What does it do? What is it for?" And then, at the end: "Now tell again about my little pumping engine."
About this time, Peter, who had hitherto taken little part in the pursuit of knowledge, became an interested audience, but of a totally different character. Peter cared little for the “why” of things; he cheerfully accepted life as it was, looking on and finding it good. He was a doer, not a thinker, and where David sighed: "I want", Peter stated: "I could get". So I found that not only did Peter abstain from questioning, but he began to supply answers to David, not often correct ones, of course, but frequently of a surprising ingenuity, as, for instance, when his father, hesitating with the carving knife over an awkward-shaped joint, called forth from David a worried query of:
"Why do you say it is difficult to carve?"
"Cos the oven was too hot, that's why," said Peter calmly, and dropped all interest in the subject. So it was that while David sought the meaning of his body and its working, Peter delighted in his and laughed about it, breaking the solemnity of the physiology lesson with cheerful comments on his own "fat tummy" and broad jokes about his physical functions. So, too, when David, hearring of baby’s arrival, worried,
“But where did it come from?”
Peter gave a nonsense answer and dismissed the matter, while David took me from how to why, and from why to how, till the divine miracle of birth was clear to him. Though he had asked for the information years before I had expected to give it, I was thankful for the privilege of telling the clean truth before other hands offered filth, and wondered a little whether joking Peter would give me the opportunity at all.
At times David's questions became a nuisance, particularly so at story time. The action was held up time and again by “why?" and “how?" and he would not let me continue till the details were clear. Peter, on the other hand, rarely asked a question, and at first I put it down to lack of interest, thinking the stories above his head. His glowing eyes gave the lie to this, and before long I realised that, far from questioning, he was giving information. Did our heroes cut a tree to build a house, David puzzled:
“How did they cut it? Why did it need to be in planks?"
But Peter, squirming to the end of his bed, hung over the rail, and breathlessly continued: "I cutted it with my chopper, and sawed it all up, and I made tables and chairs and cupboards ~ “
When they explored upstream and took to the water, David wanted to know why they took off their shoes and waded, where they put their shoes and how deep was the water, while Peter merely commented, with decision: . .
"I didn't paddle at all, cos I don't like it. I walked on the path at the side."
“There was no path," said the story-teller, sticking up for her rights as creator of the tale.
“Then I walked on the other side," said he, “but I didn't paddle." I
t was a strange difference, but there were so many differences between the boys that I accepted it without question till, suddenly, in the middle of a story, Peter gave me a clue which opened my eyes, and showed me once and for all why Peter had passed so gaily over the “What" and “How" stage, and was bothering so little with the “Why”.
Our heroes were journeying upstream for the second time and came to the place where, in a previous story, an elephant had been discovered. In the true story-teller's style, I reached the spot with: “What did they see in front of them?" and paused for effect. From his usual position on the bed-rail, Peter took up the story, without pause, in almost the identical words of the old one, told many days before:
"I saw something black, and first I saw a leg, and then I saw a trunk, and then I saw a head, and it was a Big Jumbo. He was standing over there,” his right hand pointed, "and he walked right across there and up the path." The hand swung in a curve across his body, and his eyes followed it.
I watched breathlessly. Over the thirty odd years that divide us, something in me leapt to meet its fellow, recognising in. Peter that faculty which for years I had thought universal, till puzzled men made me realise that it is not common to all - the faculty - of visualising in one clear flash. Peter saw the Big Jumbo; it did not matter to him what size it was, or what colour; he did not need, as David did, to build up from carefully collected data; it was there, big and strong, walking along the path.
"We be of one blood, thou and I," I greeted him, in the words of the jungle call, and gave thanks. Now I knew why "a sort of car that takes people over muddy country" had satisfied him as an explanation of the tank, while David had catechized me as to how it moved and why, and how people got in and out. Peter saw, as I did, a clear picture of it moving over the mud -- never mind how it moved; perhaps to his baby mind it skimmed the ground, or swayed with the motion of his rocking horse «- he saw it moving, end that was enough. Clearly and unmistakably, David stood for the man who reasons from facts, and Peter for the man who sees in pictures. The first type must always be incomprehensible to me, but I realised that I must accept it in David as I had done with his father, and that David's continual questioning was for him a reel need, filling what to Peter and me would always seem an unfillable gap. So, with such patience as I can muster, I am facing the next stage.
We have passed the "What" and “How"; we are passing through the “why”, and I recognise a new note creeping in. David, at four and a half, is becoming aware of the strangeness of time -- of the fact that - seasons pass, that summer and winter recur and, strangest of all, that there are “times to do and times to refrain from doing." To Peter, the past is still all “yesterday”, but, with a little furrow on his brow, David puzzles:
“When do the ladybirds eat all the insects up? When don’t there be any insects on the trees? - - - Why don't there be any in the winter? - - - When do there be any again?" And “Why don't we have jam puddings on hot days? - - - What sort of days do there be jam puddings?“
Carefully I give him, in as small doses as possible, the data he needs, wondering how much as the days pass, what new stages lie ahead, wishing I knew and could prepare. Why do I not know? Because we of the last generation believed that freedom lay in office and classroom, and having worked and trained for the work of lesser importance, came to the greater completely unequipped. Will our daughters be wiser, i wonder? Will they, too, believe that any untrained woman is wise enough to handle the most wonderful, the most sensitive machinery in the world, the dawning intelligence of a child?
