Secrets

When I was five years old, I believed that there was some great secret about the universe that adults were hiding from me. I spent countless hours thinking about what this could be as I colored and learned to tie my shoes.

By the time I was six years old, I had decided that it must be something about the square yellow packages hidden neatly under the sink. I triumphantly declared this to my mother one morning as she stood whispering about them with my sister. “I know what those are,” I crossed my arms, staring at the new box of yellow squares in between them. They shared a look of concern.

“Oh, really?” my mother responded, eyes wide and panicky.

This might surprise you, but there are no artsy pictures of pads.

“Duh. I’m not dumb. They’re for putting in your shoes so you walk better and so your feet are less smelly,” I smiled wide and nodded, confident that I had guessed right. My sister’s laughter told me otherwise. “Well if that’s wrong, then what are they?” I bit back, hoping to finally get some answers. I was met with cheery silence and shaking heads.

“You’ll know when you’re older.” I hated that answer.

Or maybe it was a secret something about old people. I visited the nursing home often with my great aunt to visit her mother-in-law, and I was always surprised when old roommates and fellow coloring enthusiasts simply stopped being there. If I asked about this mysterious development, though, I was always met with the same answer as before. This time it was accompanied by eyes averted to the floor and a slight turning down of the corners of a mouth. “You’ll know when you’re older,” they’d sigh. I’d fume in silence.

 

Of course, I did learn about these things when I grew older. Slowly and then all at once, adults stopped answering questions with my least favorite phrase and began to just tell me things. Such answers made me stop wanting to think about secrets entirely.

When I turned thirteen, I began to think there were no secrets of the universe left. It’s hard to believe in a grand scale conspiracy theory when curiosity has, for lack of a better analogy, killed the cat.

There is a second half of that phrase, though, that is uttered far less frequently. A form of convenient cultural amnesia seems to have edited the proverb, crafting a go-to response for parents to use on nosy little children. It is true, you see. Curiosity did kill the cat.

But satisfaction brought it back.

Now that I am, unbelievably, an adult, I have realized that “You’ll know when you’re older” no longer applies not because of my age, but because the questions that I’m left asking are questions for which we don’t always have easy answers.

Throughout my college career, I have been astounded by fascinating tidbits I have learned across subjects. Often, hidden knowledge I could never have even dreamed of has been delivered to my lap with a neat little bow and a tag that only reads, Pull Here. It is my greatest joy to keep pulling at the strings with twitching fingers, eager to dig through information for some answer about, well, anything.

I have found satisfaction in the very act of questioning and researching, even and especially when there are no answers to be found. I have rediscovered my curiosity and revel in the knowledge that of course there are still secrets. They may be less universal, less concrete, and, to some, less important, but they’re there. You just have to know how to look for them.

Keep searching.

-Margaret Iuni