Learning how little I know.

I don't remember the first time that I realized that my mom was just making it up as she went along, but at some point I did. There was a point where she answered one of my endlessly probing questions with just enough uncertainty that I realized something unfathomable. She didn't know.

As a kid, my mother knew everything. She knew how to get marker off of the wall, and what to give me when my tummy hurt. She even knew when I should bring a jacket because it was going to be cold outside. Then I got older, and my mom knew a little bit less. Like the time I was twelve and did not want a hair cut...at all. But my mother insisted that a mullet was just what I needed to "feel so much better". It was a good hair cut. I mean, a top-notch mullet to be sure, but somehow when I looked in the mirror I did not feel better.

As I kept getting older, and arguably wiser, I started to know more, and she started to know less. I blame the schools for this, in part. They taught me things she didn't know, like Latin, the Krebs Cycle, and that two parallel lines cut by a transversal have congruent alternate interior angles. They provided me with concrete evidence that my mom was no longer smarter than me. After all, she couldn't even help me with my homework. After high school, I went away to college. I didn't just go across town; I went 17 hours and a handful of states away. When I left, I knew almost everything, and my mom didn't know much at all.

It didn't happen all at once, but it was here, in my chosen institute for higher learning, that I started to realize how smart I wasn't. When I decided to move out of my dorm room and in with my best friend at the time, I wasn't smart enough to know how to do it in a way that wouldn't leave my old roommate feeling hurt and alone. I certainly wasn't smart enough to choose not to sit by the sarcastic girl with all of the piercings in Medical Terminology class who's laughing approval always caused me to be a little louder and more rude than I should. I wasn't even smart enough to know how often I should wash my sheets, or at what temperature. If my mom had been there, I am almost certain that I wouldn't have gotten so wrapped up in my boyfriend that I would stop spending time with my girl friends. She would have known better. She would have taught me to balance my time between all of the people that I loved.

Shortly after graduation, I married my husband Jayme and almost overnight my mother became infinitely smarter than I had ever imagined. My husband kept getting hungry, and I had no idea what to feed him. Night after night I would call home wanting to know how to make various chicken dishes, pot roast, and roasted vegetables. None of my questions ever stumped her. She knew how to get candle wax off of the carpet and how to clean that stubborn stain in the porcelain kitchen sink. I thought my mom's genius had reached its peak when I got pregnant. She knew what to eat and not eat, what positions to sleep in, and what questions I should ask the doctor. Just when I thought my mom couldn't get any smarter, and I couldn't get any dumber I became a mother myself. This one blessed, humbling, awesome act is what convinced me that I know nothing at all.

I remember when my daughter, Taryn, was a brand new infant. The complete lack of knowing was almost more than I could bear. Was she crying because she was tired, hungry, wet, gassy, sick? There was no way to know. Why did they let me leave the hospital with her? I was completely unprepared! If there had been a competency test for parenting I would have failed!!! Even now, she is four and Trevor is two and I feel like I have spent the last four years knowing less and less. I don't know what to tell her when she tells me that she never wants to go to Heaven. When she asks why God never comes to our house if He loves us, and why she can't hear him talk to her- what do I say? Is this a normal sniffle, or do they need to go to the doctor? Is his cough rattling his chest, or clear? Why does so and so tell her that they can't be friends, and when will the teacher let her be partners with Dylan. I DON'T KNOW!

One thing that I do know is that there is always someone with more answers than me. My mom. She knows things. She knows things that don't get asked on Jeopardy or when helping with high school Geometry. She knows how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch, and baked potatoes, and she knows where to go to find fabric paint. My mom knows what to do when a child has a fever, or a cough, or a rash, or an impossible question. Sitting here today in a world where I don't know much at all, I do know one thing. My mom knows everything.