“If you expect me to answer my own question, I confess that I do not know.”

They call me an adult. Yes, I have learned to make spaghetti sauce, to drive a car. I have mastered some dance steps and can write a concise email response (using spell check to avoid the embarrassments of the past.)

But what have I really learned in my days of clouds passing, night thundershake and the revisiting of another spring? Days of scarlet fever, owning mistakes and reimagining?

With another ring around my trunk, adding layers of curious, I know that I know less with passing time. Like paint peeling off an old house I am more than one color. I live as a revolving door to exit and enter, each time with a different view.

Growing up I thought adults had all the answers, lived in comfortable sureness. Shocked disappointment crashed down when the truth broke through with no answers in its hands.

Why didn’t mom tell me adulthood didn’t come with all the answers.

“She had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words.”

1. Illusions by Richard Bach

2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Written for the dVerse challenge, Bridging the Gap: Select two quotes from two different books. You decide whether you want them recklessly random or slightly/significantly more intentional. Then, construct a poem using one quote as the opening line and the other as the closing line. The blood, sweat, and tears will come while filling in the space between. You may modify the quotes to fit your poem’s rhythm or rhyme scheme, but just be sure to provide the original quotes, authors, and works in a postscript.