Tabula Rasa

The Romans had wax tablets they used for taking notes.  When they were finished, they would melt it back down and erase it, thereby gaining a blank slate.  The Latin term for that is tabula rasa, and when it comes to theories about how human identity works, it means that we are born without any mental content, and that we gain our knowledge through experience and perception.

I don't think we are totally blank slates.  But we sure are not born with built-in knowledge like say, deer have.  A baby deer is able to stand within minutes of birth and instinctively knows a lot about its environment.  When Carly was about ten and crazy about dolphins, she was reading in her room and called down the hallway asking, "Mom, isn't the umbilical cord the thing that ties the baby to the mommy in her belly?"

"Yes," I called back.  I waited for more.  Silence.  I stood it about 90 seconds then called again.  "Carly Darly, what are you reading?"

"It's about how the baby dolphin is born in the water.  The mommy dolphin has to break the umbilical cord with her snout, get the baby up to the surface to breathe, and then get out of there fast because Orcas will be attracted to the scent of the blood from the placenta."

Frankly, after considering what that was like, I felt kind of puny as a birthing creature.  I just laid there.  Being a double Cesarean mom, I never even pushed.

But babies are born with all kinds of instinctive knowledge.  Carly was born early following a short and troubled pregnancy and did not latch onto a bottle for about six weeks.  It was hard to get her to drink long enough to sleep more than an hour or two.  As soon as she got a few ounces, she lost interest.

Kim was born over a month older gestationally speaking, and she slept through the night (11:00 p.m. to 5:45 a.m.) her first night home from the hospital.  Nobody had to teach her anything.  She continued that schedule throughout their babyhoods.  Carly walked at 14 months, Kim at 10.  Carly got teeth at 9 month; Kim was a biter early and often.  Once, I was standing at the sink washing dishes in a pair of shorts and she came up and wrapped her arms around my knees, facing my back, and clamped onto the back of my right thigh with her little piranha teeth.  I wanted to knock her to kingdom come because it HURT, but I didn't want to break her neck.  I was dancing like a chicken trying to disengage her teeth from my leg.  She broke skin and it was bruised like plum pie for nearly a month.

On Facebook, Nathan and Sara just posted a picture of their daughter Keirra pushing a miniature steel shopping cart in a store.  She's about 16 months, cute as pie.  I wrote a caption for the photo that said:  "Give me the credit card and the keys and get out of my way."

Jennifer, in Arkansas, heavy with Jordyn and spending her last days as mother of an only child, Jace, emailed me without knowing any of this about Keirra in Pennsylvania that Jace is copying her walk.  However much blank slate he might have been starting out, he has absorbed everything about his parents.  He puts his hands on his hips and pooches his belly out as much as possible, not much, so I imagine him all swaybacked, and he came downstairs today and said:  "I need my keys and my credit card.  I'm going to Wal-Mart and the doctor."

Oh how I miss that baby boy.  And he's almost three and no longer a baby at all.  At this rate, he'll be old enough to date Keirra and move here by the time I get another row of wrinkles.

Tonight Carly made green beans and baked cod.  I don't know what she did exactly.  I was tired and hungry and she made a nice crust (bread crumbs, spices) on top of the cod.  Also potatoes, fresh yeast rolls.  Yesterday it was cheeseburger pizza.  That's right, Pennsylvanians, we gave up a lot to be here, and one of the best things was cheeseburger pizza.  I last had it in a restaurant with Pepper in Farmington at Ye Olde King's Pizza Shop.  We have a stand mixer and it has a dough hook so now we get pizza at home with yeasty homemade crust.

One night as I sat grading (summer school ends Wednesday, the grading shortly thereafter, then a month off, oh man yeah!) the cartoon Jem and the Holograms came on and we watched it.  Hasbro made dolls of the characters.  The girls played with them a lot when they were little and I also would like to collect dolls myself if I was feeling materialistic.  (Okay, I have four Barbie dolls in my closet.)  During the ending credits, Kim says boy, if I ever had the money, I would have a set of those dolls again just because.  I said oh yeah, me too.  And Carly looked at us like we done lost it.

Kimberly has no recollection of my grandmother without Alzheimer's (hardly any at all to be honest).  Yet she laughs and smiles like my grandmother so much I want to cry sometimes.  Carly laughs like my brother and is tall like my mother.  Both of them have a good two inches on me and I'm 5'8".  Kim is 5'6" again like Grandma who was 5'3" but still, there is some DNA for you.  She didn't get short from anywhere else.

I'm sure they've forgotten all sorts of things from their childhood, and there is no answer at this time for how much of who we are is nature, dna, instinct, and how much is nurture, environment, learned.  But everything imprints on us.  I wonder sometimes if, in the new world, when we have perfect brains, if we will have perfect memories.  If we can fan back through our synapses and remember everything about a certain day.  And if those days bring pain, as for all of us there are days such as that, and Jehovah is going to satisfy the desire of every living thing, will those days go missing?  Yes, I over think myself sometimes.

I don't know the answers.  The word essay comes from the Latin word essais, and is closely related to assay, which is what kind of office they had in the Gold Rush to assess the value and weight of gold nuggets.  When writing an essay, one attempts to assess the qualities of something.  It also implies that it is an attempt, which may or may not be successful.  I write to attempt to figure things out.  For me, writing is a way to think.  But I don't always get an answer to the problems I think on.  It isn't math where you do a whole big equation and end up with x=2 at the end. 

Some kids have to go to Sheetz with aspirin bottles full of dimes to get a hot dog.  Some kids have it a lot better, and some have it a lot worse.  Some kids end up being psychopaths and criminals and some kids grow up to be nurses and artists.  There are so many variables in the equation identity.  Why are we the way we are?  Our parents form us, our friends, our race and gender and economic situation.  I am shaped by having red hair, by loving words, by being born in Texas and talking with this here accent ya'll.

I like reading accounts like when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well.  He could discern her identity.  Humans can't do that.  I was wondering today if Jehovah loves me.  I shouldn't wonder, but I have my own insecurities to deal with.  And that is one thing I figured out I think for sure.  If Jehovah had the limitations of a human, well, I'd be in a hot mess probably.  I was thinking about who I am in relation to where I came from and what I had to work with, and I felt okay about my life like that.  I can't compare myself, or try to figure out how lovable I am, compared to anyone else.  Nobody but me grew up a girl in my house, had my DNA, lived through my experiences.  And the person who saw everything is Jehovah, so like the WT the week before yesterday, there are good reasons for Him to be the most important person in our lives.  We have all that shared experience.  And though the world scribbles upon our wax, he can melt it and make it smooth in the new world.