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| Daniel's self portrait with a dash of Christmas mess |
I guess 4 is when the tough questions hit? No one warned me about this. He seems to always ask me stuff when I can't bolt or distract him. 6 days before Christmas D and I were driving to the mall to peek at Santa (no lap sitting for this kid). As you can imagine traffic was horrendous and he pulls out the, "How are babies made?" bomb. I smoothed it over with my usual answer of "babies grow inside of mommies." Normally this works. This time? Not so much.
D: Yeah, Mom, but how do babies get in there?
Me: Er, daddies help put them in there.
D: (silence)
Me: (sigh of relief)
D: How do daddies do that?
Me: (
fuck) Um, well mommies have eggs, kind of like a chicken, but really small and they keep them inside. And daddies have this stuff called sperm. They give it to the mommies and that makes a baby.
D: (looooooong silence) So I have sperm?
Me: Yes. One day you can be a daddy if you want.
D: Mommy, do you want a baby? I can share some of my sperm.
Me: (doing my best not to giggle) Oh thanks, baby, but I am married to Daddy, so he shares his sperm with me. When you find someone you love and you decide you want a baby, you can share it then, OK?
D: OK. Can we look at Legos at the mall?
And it was over. I survived. And now I need to warn the babysitter.
Just today we were driving home from the store and he asks me, "Is Daddy going to die?" He asks about death a lot. I think it's because we talk about his sister and he knows that she died. I admit, this is such a hard road for me to travel with him. Trey and I are atheists (though the term
Secular Humanist is really what we prefer), and I have no comforting afterlife to tell him about because I don't believe in one. Telling him about life after death is akin to lying to him. I don't do that. As cheesy as it sounds, we tell him that when we die, our bodies go into the ground and we get to help plants grow. Plants help people and animals and then we cue Elton John...."The ciiiiiiircle of liiiiiife..."
So back to my story. D asked me if Daddy was going to die. I was totally squirming and caught between wanting to be totally honest and wanting to protect him. I chose honesty. I told him one day, probably in a really long time, Daddy would die.
And then he started crying.
And I felt like an asshole.
He was fairly inconsolable for a few minutes. By this time we had gotten home, so I pulled him into my lap and hugged him for a while. I tried to explain that Daddy would be around for a long time. He would be all grown up and have children of his own. He said that it wasn't fair and that it made him sad and he didn't like that Daddy would die. I agreed that it doesn't seem fair and it made me sad and I didn't like it either. He asked who would protect him. I explained that he would be old enough to protect himself. He would probably be even bigger than Daddy.
It sucks but that's all I had. I let him sit in my lap and feel sad, because it is sad. And though he isn't me, I'd rather deal with a shitty truth and come to terms with it than to be lied to. I've been on both ends of that and I would choose the truth every time.
He never questioned my mortality, so he either understands that it transfers to all living things, or I am still immortal in his 4-year-old eyes. I am good with that for now.