Questions

The other night, I was feeling particularly lazy.

We had just finished dinner as a family, and may have been attempting to watch something together to bridge that gap between dinner and bedtime.

I recall feeling slightly sleepy, somewhat disinterested in what we were attempting to watch, and then falling into the dreaded YouTube hole that I tend to fall into in moments like this.

After several minutes of being in that hole, I received a strange phone call.

Let me back up.

***

Several weeks prior to this moment, a lovely neighbour of ours decided to start selling fresh-baked sourdough bread.

It tastes incredible.

Our neighbour's child and our daughter are in the same class at school. They've known each other for several years.

Once the sourdough bread is baked and ready for delivery, our neighbour sometimes sends their child out with a few loaves to walk around and deliver to us neighbours.

***

Now back to me being trapped in that YouTube hole.

A few minutes before that moment, we heard a knock on the door.

It was a bread delivery, by our neighbour's child.

Truly, a gift. We did pay for it, but still, a gift.

Our son answered the door, picked up the bread, and our neighbour's child went off to the next delivery.

Shortly after this moment is when I received that strange phone call.

It was from our neighbour. The baker. The parent of the child who had just knocked on our door.

I answered with a somewhat puzzled and curious tone.

"Hello?"

"Is my child at your house?"

"Sorry, what was that?"

"Is my child at your house? They haven't come home yet..."

***

I won't leave you hanging here. The child made it home, they were just chatting with our other neighbours and lost track of time or may have been avoiding bedtime.

Either way, safe and sound.

That's not the point of my story.

The point of my story is what happened to me the moment after I received that phone call.

There were the obvious things like panic, adrenaline, trying to look calm in front of our kids, relief, etc.

But none of those are the interesting thing.

The interesting thing, which I still can't quite explain, is that when my neighbour first said, "Is my child at your house?" my brain somehow interpreted that as some strange voice asking me if anyone was home.

If you recall, I was in a deep YouTube hole at the time.

Until that point, I had also never received a phone call from this neighbour. Ever.

When I got that phone call, it's as if someone peeked behind the curtain of my life in that very moment and asked a question that I was afraid to answer.

"Is anyone home?"

The honest answer was no. My brain was switched off and just binging YouTube. I was slouched over and close to falling asleep. So, no. In the inner workings of my own mind, no one was "home."

This is why I had to ask my neighbour to clarify her question, "Sorry, what was that?"

***

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how some words (or lack of words) can stop us in our tracks.

I think that certain questions can do that too.

Often, they may be the questions we're too afraid to ask ourselves because we don't want to admit the answer out loud.

Then somehow, someone else asks us that very question or a close enough approximation to that very question.

Do you have a question like that right now?

What would you do if you heard it asked out loud?