Symby-what?
Logan likes to chatter more than eat most nights at dinner. He has a lot to say and a lot to ask - and dinner seems the right time to do it. Tonight, in between a running commentary on a wide range of topics and bites of his burger, Logan asked:"What does symbiosis mean?"
His brow furrowed in that way it does when he's deeply focused and endlessly curious.
I stopped chewing. It was a word I knew I should know. I had this fleeting blurred memory of my freshman year Biology teacher clip-clopping around the room in her circa 1960s shoes as she droned on about symbiotic something or other. Bruce reached for something. Some answer. He started to head for the definition of osmosis. "No, that's not it, is it?" he said.
Bruce gave Logan that honest adult face - the one you get frustrated with sometimes when you're a kid. You don't want honest, you want answer. "I don't know," Bruce said, "We'll go in and look it up when we're done eating. Ok?"
"Logan?" I asked, starting to think of a possible way to decipher his question, "Where did you hear the word? Do you remember how it was used?"
He went back to his dinner plate, mushing around what he didn't feel like eating, "Stanley said it," he finally replied. Which confirmed that it was in biology class that I'd heard the word. Yes, of course, it must have to do with animals if he'd seen it on Stanley earlier in the day.
As Logan settled in for his bath I pulled out the book Megan had given him for his birthday - Stanley's Great Big Book of Everything. We found a definition for symbiants there. I read it to him. I found the page about the Oxpecker bird that lives on big mammals like elephants and eats the bugs off the mammals back. I explained how sometimes two very different creatures could live together and help each other. He stared at me.
Apparently I had just defined symbiant for him, but not symbiosis. He asked me again. I defined again. Then he grinned. His eyes twinkled. And he asked me yet again.
That little bugger.
posted by Sandy at
10:15 PM
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