Stay baffled

On John, my husband’s, very long list of shit to get done before he left on his work trip this week (fill the fridge, charge the car, give Stella’s gnocchi cheeks one million kisses), was: call the phone company to get international calling. Maya was at the kitchen table, making elaborate Perler bead creations for her friends. Stella was in the living room, making an elaborate social world between a bunch of 2-D magnetic dolls. I was tidying up. It feels like I am always and forever tidying up.

The hold music ceased and a woman’s voice came on: “How can I help you?”

“I need to add international calling to my cell.”

“Wonderful! Where are you going?”

“Germany.”

“Germany! WOW! That is amazing! You must be so excited!”

When I tell you this woman was ecstatic, I mean ECSTATIC. It was as if she were John’s mother, but even more excited than that. It was as if she’d just read the best novel of her life about Germany, and now she was meeting someone who got to go there. It stopped me in my tidying tracks. I paused and listened.

“I see two cell numbers on this account. Do they both need international calling?”

“No, just mine. The other number is my wife’s and she’s not going.”

“Oh, she must be so pissed! Is she pissed? I mean, you’re going to Germany! That is so cool!”

“Well, it’s a work trip. And we have two small children so someone needs to stay home,” he said.

At this point I walked through the kitchen and made wide eyes at him, as if to say: what is happening? He shook his head, smiling widely in disbelief.

“Of course,” the exuberant woman said, “Of course! But wow, you must just be thrilled. Hopefully she can be thrilled for you! This is just amazing!”

I had to go out front to our courtyard and laugh out loud. It was so wildly unexpected, so totally inappropriate in tone and perfect because of it. This woman, I realized, was actually responding with as much wonder as a nearly 10,000 mile trip on a flying piece of metal in the clouds during a global pandemic should be met with. Her enthusiasm seemed bizarre at first blush (I honestly wondered if she was on drugs), but the more I thought about it, the more I felt like she was the proportional one. In our fog of to-do lists and passport renewals and N95s, we had forgotten to feel baffled that it was possible at all.

I can’t stop thinking about this woman. Does she express this kind of excitement every time someone is going on an international trip? Or was there something specific about that day, about John, about Germany?

I have no idea, but I am left wishing I could be her in so many situations. When I see my neighbor and her three-year-old daughter, I sort of feel like shouting, “Holy shit, you made that kid in your belly and now she’s pointing out the moon on a Tuesday morning, still hanging in the sky even though it’s time to go to preschool! And while we’re on it—the moon?! Are you kidding?! The frickin’ moon that waxes and wanes? How did we all get so lucky?”

Or take last night. Maya had a list of words she was supposed to practice for a spelling test later this week. I asked her how to spell funny. She said, “F-U-N-N-Y.” She knew it had two Ns?! How did she know that? Then she told us something accurate and insane about comets. And packed her own lunch. My daughter, who once lay in her crib like a tiny inert burrito—double-bagged in swaddles—looking up at the ceiling trying to focus her brand new, deep green eyes…now she can identity a metaphor, and describe photosynthesis, and patiently explained the different between lying and imagination to her sister. It didn’t work, but it was very earnest and sophisticated. How does a brain go from mostly being preoccupied with focusing on an object a few feet in front of it—an object it has no language for or theory of mind about—to parsing out truth and creativity?

Look, I know I sound like I’m on drugs now, too. I’m not. I’m just weighed down so heavily by the medicine balls of this moment—my friend’s uncle died of covid this week, some people have way too much money and some have none, the government might shut down again. I can only mentally weather the medicine balls if I follow this woman’s lead and gape at the seemingly impossible possibilities that are also floating about, taken for granted, normalized, but really quite baffling. Airplanes fly. Babies learn language. The moon hangs in the sky, our ever shifting reminder of the cosmos, something bigger than us and also completely committed to its ritual regardless of our acrimony, inequity, and grief.

A new paper is out this week: scientists found a planet orbiting three stars. The New York Times writes: “It suggests planet formation is more common than we think,” and that there is “much more to learn about the unexpected ways in which planets can form.”

This is not the part where I tell you that we should find hope in the possibility of building giant rockets and ditching this God forsaken earth for new frontiers. This is the part where I tell you that the new frontier is in our noticing, in our exuberance for what might seem ordinary but is actually extra, in our ability to stay baffled. Be that woman on the phone. Be that toddler gazing at the moon. Don’t forget how unlikely all of this actually is.

—

Speaking of the art of attention, don’t sleep on my bud Wendy MacNaughton’s TED talk.

I also LOVE when MacArthur Foundation announces its prizes every year. Get baffled by these geniuses.