I Don't Know!

I've been learning lately how very little I actually know. It seems to me that my kids are helping me learn this at an almost-daily pace. Here they are, looking at me to answer their (many, unceasing) questions, and half the time I don't even know the answer! It was so much easier when I kind of just "knew", but when it comes time to explain these things in simple terms, I am so often at a loss. For example, I really don't know why the frogs in the pond died. That didn't stop us from having an impromptu funeral service for them, complete with gravestones and singing, but I don't know why they died, and the kids want to know. (I actually want to know too). Was it from natural causes, or perhaps the winter was too cold? Aren't they designed to survive the winter? Or did the heat lamp we used to create a hole in the ice for our fish create some sort of unnatural event for the frogs which caused them to....well....croak? Maybe we'll never know.

I also don't know what caused the Black Plague way back in medieval times, although my 9 year old has learned that it was caused by fleas, which then spread to people. Truly horrible. But if you'd asked me anything about the Plague previously, I'd have had no idea. Maybe I don't need to know about this for my day-to-day life, but shouldn't I have learned this at some point? Did I miss that day of school?

It's true that I also don't know if the kids can have Alphabits for breakfast (they asked tonight, preemptively, I suppose), what's for supper tomorrow, or when am I going to bake cinnamon buns again? I know I'm supposed to be the grown-up here and have an answer to all these questions, but I'm sorry that I just don't.

Another thing I don't know (but was asked about at suppertime) is why the kids' school spent so much time and effort fundraising for the people of Haiti after the earthquake, and why no one is talking about Japan anymore at school (I assume this is not just happening at our school). Have we been so inundated with disaster coverage that we now block it out? Have we given all we want to give? Do we not care anymore? Do we think someone else is doing it? Have we decided that perhaps Japan has enough of its own resources, whereas Haiti did not? What happens when another disaster strikes? We can't have already forgotten about the floods in Australia and the earthquake in New Zealand, but each new disaster seems to cause us to forget about the previous ones. Is this the answer to the question?

My list-of-things-I-don't-know is growing every day, and I suppose I should be thanking my kids for giving me more opportunities to learn, instead of worrying about how very little I really do know!