Predictability

Dear Miru,

When I walked you home from the kindergarten to your grandparent’s house today, you made me very happy. The sky was grey and light rain drizzled on the pavement as I knelt down in front of you. Then you said exactly what I had imagined you would say: “Regent het! Naar binnen!” (“Does it rain! Inside!”). I asked you what we didn’t have, and you said “Papaplu!” (umbrella). The streets were damp and grey and we sang about everything that gets wet when it rains. The trees, the cars, the children, the dogs, the cats, the roads, my hat, the playground and the umbrella.

Predictability can be a delightful, disarming sensation. The world of our imagination reconstructs itself in front of our eyes. As we experience its entanglement with the real world, distance is for a brief moment suspended and our fears dissolved.