'It isn't always about today you know.' Her voice rang out from the kitchen as she re-organised the table from its daytime disarray of egg cartons, paint brushes, sharpies and 'sticking stuff' to ready for mealtime. 'Sticking stuff' could be anything from old bits of ribbon, wire, feathers and googly eyes, to tissue paper, old laces, pieces of tin foil - scrumpled or smooth - twigs and leaves or more boxes. Anything that looked interesting, colourful or stick-able. I watched and wondered what 'it' might have been referring to and, unable to decipher the cryptic clue, I inquired, 'What isn't? About today?'
'The FUTURE! It's not always about today becoming tomorrow and the future we'll then have.'
Well that was one of those statements that you either say, 'Oh, right. Yeah,' to and get on with your life exactly the same way you would have if nothing had been said at all. Or, you think about it and find you have another question.
I thought, and thought a bit more, then replied with a comment and a question.
'Well, it must be about today. Without today, we can't have a tomorrow. If we can't have a tomorrow, we can't have a future, can we?' It was a good counter, I thought. Pretty clear cut.
'Really?' was her answer.
Now, how do you answer a 'Really?'. One delivered with the rapidly ascending pitch, so that the ‘ee’ bit is nearly an octave higher than the 'rrrr' – a rolled 'r’ obviously. It’s a mix between genuine surprise that I may have thought my thought and an underlying, but not expressed, 'Wow, that’s the last thing I think she would have said. Clearly not thought about her answer at all.'
And so, back to the thinking board to draw out a better response. Trickier than it first seemed.
Counter question – that’s what’s needed, 'So, are you saying that we can have a future if we don’t have a today?' I didn’t wait more than three seconds for the response.
'Without getting all philosophical, we haven’t time for that; the dinner is nearly ready. "Today" is irrelevant because you are really talking about "the present". As soon as the present happens, it instantly becomes the past, doesn’t it? I mean, it has no option and instantly there is a new present, and then another and another and another. Don’t you think?'
I thought, and realised I really needed several things.
1. My macaroni cheese and garlic flatbread. It’s not easy thinking this close to eating time, with aromas wafting through from the open kitchen door, as though in a Bisto advert of yesteryear, and wakening up my olfactory nerve with a ‘mmmmm’ response all of its own.
2. To wash my hands. Thoroughly. And sing Happy Birthday twice as I purged any potential nasty little virus pods (as I choose to picture them) from my skin.
3. To add pasta to the next shopping list as there could only be, at best, enough left to make one more pasta meal. Oh – and cheese, if possible, with some ciabatta to make that lunchtime suggestion I noticed on someone’s Insta story. Anything to make it seem like we are having something ‘different’ and tasty, but cheap, to eat.
4. I need to call the others to wash their hands too, so better get moving…
'Are you still thinking about it? I need a help to serve this up. Well I did and I still do – you see, that was the present, then it passed, but the new present is still the same because I still need your help. I think I will still need it for a few minutes, so that is the future too, even though I am not talking about ‘tomorrow’. Do you see what I mean?'
I looked at her. Diminutive in stature, but, as always, she seemed to grow in front of me. I was often in awe of her thought processes and the connections she would express. I tried to think what might have prompted this sudden talk about 'future' as she turned her gaze on me.
'Are you ready? Everything here is. It smells good enough to eat.'
I watched her smile and the hint of a giggle escaped. I caught it and smiled back, 'That’s lucky then.' A common interplay, but usually said in reverse, with me delivering the ‘good enough to eat' line and her auto-response, ‘That’s lucky then’.
'Let me just call everyone else and wash my hands, then I’ll help serve up. I’ll do that in the future too. Serving meals up I mean.' My response was shared as I headed for the WC and called for male members of family to carry out their own renditions of Happy Birthday whilst practising aseptic hand washing routines. I didn’t quite catch her reply, but it sounded something like, 'Serving up is always in the future even when it’s right now.'
I wondered what it might be like inside that brain. Perhaps similar to shooting through an intergalactic highway, with swooping, sometimes spiralling, supersonic connective routes that could spin off into a never-ending voyage of cosmic travel. As each thought originated, there would be no way of predicting its route, or even its method of travel. I’m sure at times the thought would be berthed on a time travelling bus, whooshing through space alongside countless other thoughts, which may or may not jostle and collide. A thought tumbled into my own cranium – would this then mean some of her thoughts would make it into the future, and some would be condemned to no more than a fleeting instant, and never make it out of the present. Indeed, perhaps never to have existed as a moment in the past either, as surely the thought only actually exists if it makes it through the cerebellum, parietal lobe, cerebral cortex and onwards safely, until registering in the frontal lobe.
She’s eleven, free from past and present.