While walking across the dusty industrial heath today, I came across a plant that I thought was dill, because of it's tiny needles, even though it had thick stalks, something like bok choy or green onions. It turned out to be an anise, as I discovered when I rubbed the needles between my fingers, getting the scent on them, and smelled my fingers.

This is something I learned as a kid from my mother. Whenever we were walking over hill or dale, or through someone's fancy garden, she'd rub some showy herb between her fingers, smell it, and then exhort me, "Mmm, Ezra. Smell! It's so good."

But I was categorically, religiously opposed to these demonstrations. I was convinced there was some ploy afoot, some trick to make a fool of me, or somehow make me question the roots of my being, to force aside all my stubbornness toward bathing, eating greens, and generally not being the sourpussed brat that I was between the ages of 5 and 25. But, not knowing what she *was* up to, I'd always demand some justifiable reason for her wanting me to sniff this foreign plant: "Why?" I wouldn't risk losing face by just inhaling the bloody thing, not without getting some explanation. I had to know what sniffing plants was good for.

In this and a thousand other ways, my mom would invite me to something or instruct me against some other thing, and I'd demand "Why?" The king of all such struggles was the classic, "Clean your room!" For this I could see no decent reason at all, and yet my mother was adamant that it must be done. If it was so important, why couldn't she give me one lousy reason--simple or complex, subtle or stupendous? I was patient! I was ready to listen! I wanted to absorb the rationale for why any thinking being would waste time rearranging the piles of clothes in one's room, knowing full well they'd all be disrupted again in just days. I wanted my eyes to be opened, provided there was something to see, some legitimate explanation for it all.

It wasn't until a few months ago that I realized what was the fundamental deep difference between my mother and I that kept us at such a stalemate. Since you've already suffered me thus far, I hope you won't mind my diverting your attention with another story, prefigured by an epigraph of my poet friend J. D, from a private email:

By the way, expectation is the thing to release—good things come of that.

In the cool Northwest summer of last year, when I was working in a first grade classroom, the kids had a math problem to do each morning. It would be written on the whiteboard (!) when the kids came in and they'd have the first hour of the morning to work on it and turn in a piece of paper showing their solution. Something like this: "Farmer Brown has three stalks of corn. Each stalk has four ears on it. How many ears does Farmer Brown have?" On each table there were some little counters and the kids were encouraged to use those to find the total.

One morning I was working with one kid in particular, an earnest and agreeable kid with a great bowl haircut, the kind that was much in fashion when I myself was six. This morning, he was struggling with a problem that seemed to me about on the level with what this class was used to doing, but he wasn't finding the answer so I was trying to help him get a handle on it.

"How many are on each stalk?" "Three." "Well, there are three stalks, but is that the number of ears on the stalk?" "Oh, four." "OK, now if there are four on the first stalk and four on the second stalk, then how many are there on those first two?" "What do you mean?"

Somehow too big a leap had occurred in my thinking, so I shaved it down into smaller pieces. Without going into the details, I worked with him for maybe twenty minutes, trying different tacks; he always seemed very close, but kept coming to "What do you mean?" or "I don't understand." I didn't see any way to slice the problem any finer; by the end of it, I couldn't understand why he wasn't able to answer some questions that seemed to have a fairly straightforward answer.

At some point, the regular teacher, an amazing man named Darren, came over and watched for a bit, and then spoke. He had the boy draw a picture with the right number of ears on each stalk, put a counter on each one, and then count up the total number of counters. Simple! The kid turned in his paper and went off to play. Darren caught me and explained: "With someone like [name], he's more able to get it if you help him build it out, and then he can see the problem. You were trying to go at it in a conceptual way, which some of these kids will do, but [name] isn't ready for that. He'll understand it if he keeps building it with counters enough times." This simple bit of pedagogical strategy started a series of wheels spinning in my head and eight months later I'm still trying to either stop it from spinning, or get some momentum out of it.

A conceptual way. It hadn't occurred to me that there could be a non-conceptual way to approach addition. So I had to face that I myself have an unfailingly conceptual way of approaching every problem I encounter.

My mother, in the way she raised me, had a non-conceptual way of teaching me things. She figured that if I smelled enough herbs, I'd eventually appreciate why people stoop to smell them, or if I cleaned my room enough times, I'd understand the benefits of a clean room. I wanted to go the other way: If I could understand the Clean Room Theory, I'd have a solid basis for cleaning; otherwise my own theory was that it was fruitless. I was constantly frustrated at how many things grownups couldn't or wouldn't explain—what sort of world was this, where people blindly went through all the motions without having good reasons?

If I had it (childhood) to do over again, I'd do the same; I'd insist on reasons again, and try again to root out the silly things that grownups do out of mere convention. But still, if I could be a kid again, I'd like to take with me a willingness to try things without first having a reason. Now on my better days, I am willing, and if I wasn't, I'd still be eating strictly french fries and watching afternoon cartoons. If I could go back I'd fight less with my mom, because I'd dig where she was coming from. By having me smell those herbs, she was trying to get me to learn without expectation—and that is the thing to release. Good things come of that.