Genesis
A child’s view of life’s origins and endings
Two days after my father-in-law died, I sat in the corner of my basement surrounded by a menagerie of creatures. First came a parade of sloths driving cars. The sloths morphed into meowing cats, playful puppies, and squealing guinea pigs. When an eagle and mountain lion materialized, the smaller animals hid under pillows, fearing predation.
In a strange twist of fate, even my childhood golden retriever made an appearance.
All the creatures bore a shocking resemblance to my four human children.
From the corner, I observed my children playing. One month out from rotator cuff surgery, I was still protecting my semi-functional left arm. As I watched the humanoid animals, my wife was across the country with her siblings, in the wake of her father’s death. Winter break had not gone according to plan.
Like so much of the circus that is life as a family of six, the moment felt almost absurd.
During a lull in the action, I held my daughter Molly in my lap, cradling her in my right arm. At four, Molly was our youngest. The warmth of her small body snuggled against mine was soothing, even though I was supposed to be the one comforting her.
Next to me on the floor sat Leo, our six-year-old son. The third of three boys. Wally was eight; he was swinging in a blue cloth hammock that hung from anchors I had bolted into the floor joists years earlier. Our oldest—Brandon—was jumping between couches and cushions on the carpeted floor.
“Where did the first person come from?” asked Leo, looking up at me with earnest brown eyes.
I looked back at him, waiting for the answer to form in my mind.
“Brandon,” answered Molly, from my lap. “Brandon was the first.”
I smiled, looking down at her little face.
“I think he means the first person on earth, honey. Not the first child in our family.”
“Oh…” she replied, burrowing closer into my chest.
I turned back to Leo.
“Well…let’s see…people didn’t just appear all at once. We…we changed, slowly, from something else.”
“It’s called evolution,” said Brandon, from the couch. “We evolved from monkeys. When they came down from the trees.”
“Yes. Apes, really,” I replied. “But you’re right, we evolved from animals.”
Wally continued swinging, with his head poking out from the hammock. He was quiet, staring up at the ceiling.
Looking up at me with raised eyebrows, Leo asked, “Like cavemen?”
“Uh…yeah, I guess,” I said. Then, considering the world in which we lived, I continued, “Not everyone believes that—that we evolved from apes. Some people do think humans just appeared. That humans and Earth were created by God.”
Leo peered at me with scrunched eyebrows. He then looked out at the room strewn with pillows, stuffed animals, and plastic pieces of food, before bringing his eyes back to meet mine.
“I don’t think that’s true,” he said. Pointing a small finger up at my face, he added, “I think your story is the truth.”
The joist anchors squeaked as Wally continued swinging. He broke his silence, speaking out from the hammock.
“The Earth came from the big boom,” he said, giggling. “From the sun’s boom-boom.”
Leo smiled wide.
“The sun took a big, round dump.”
I laughed. We all did—an unexpected moment of levity in a week defined by loss.
Perhaps you will remember this story, when life feels like you are wading through a pile of poop. It’s inevitable you will. We all are sometimes.