I had an interesting moment with my daughter (who is six) at
bedtime tonight. She was just about to
drift off after having a mini Reiki treatment where we had gone over all the
chakras, and their functions. Especially
curious about the Sacral chakra (governs procreation and feelings) she began to
muse about how babies are made. Like a
good mother I fought my natural instinct to run from the room screaming “Not
till you’re thirty!” and instead gazed down into her angelic face and asked,
“Well sweets, where do you think babies come from?” (Boo yeah!
Ball, back in her court. No
trauma for my kid).
“Daisy” (who is her half-sister, and three years her senior)
“told me that babies get born when a boy puts his privates into a girls
privates.” At this point I am clutching
blanket and doing my best to keep a smile on my face despite my
hyperventilation and newly discovered urge to strangle someone else’s
child. “Oh?” comes out of my mouth in
four syllables, each an octave higher than the last. “And what do you think about that?” I visibly cringe as I await her answer in the
dark.
“That’s just dumb.”
She pronounces with finality.
“First you have to quit smoking and then the baby lives in an egg inside
your tummy, but an egg with space, and maybe a part for the head any arms to
stick out, so the baby isn’t bored. But
it can’t breathe in there so the baby holds its breath for a long time, and
when it can’t hold its breath no more, then it’s born.” Now to my credit I held a straight face
through all of this, I didn’t even crack a cheeky grin. Besides, you can probably imagine how I was
awash in relief when I realized we weren’t quite at the age to have “that”
talk. But to be honest, the part about quitting smoking was kind of hard to
hear. She has seen me try unsuccessfully
to quit a number of times. She is also
very excited for a baby brother, and I tend to shoo the question away with a
“Well mom has to stop smoking before she can have a baby”, so I understand her
confusion.
Now I’d like to be one of those proactive parents who
doesn’t hide anything from their children, and in many ways I am very honest
with her, more so than most. This is
just one of those subjects that causes me the greatest amount of personal grief
and leaves me feeling unstable, no matter which route I take. My opinions on my daughter(who is yet still a
baby)’s sex life are dichotomous. On one
side of the coin, the mama-bear-rip-your-head-off-if-you-look-at-her-wrong side
I want to caution her and tell her of STIs, and teenage pregnancy, and the
heart-rending realization that you have been used and tossed aside like
tissue. Admittedly there is a part of me
that wants her to wait until she really is thirty, in the hopes that I might
discover early senility and have no idea that the deed has been done. Of course, when you flip that coin, there is
a reasonable and logical woman who wants her to experience the unbridled
passion, intimacy, and heartbreaking beauty of sex. Just not now.
The most difficult part of the whole thing, is knowing that
the weight of responsibility for what she is told, and what she believes, is so
much on myself. There are “rules” for
how to explain it or “ages” that kids should know what at, but at the end of
the day, we are all unique, and I am flawed. She will understand the world, and all it has
to offer, in her own distinctive way.
She will sample from the plate of life, uninhibited and free. She will fall, and be hurt, and learn the
deepest of lessons, whether I will it, or no.
The only inarguable thing I can hope to really teach her is that there
will always be a safe spot for her, here, in my arms.
Now this musing occurred rather more quickly in my own head,
and she still hadn’t dropped the subject of making babies when she asked if we
had a little box inside us for the egg. Taking
the direct approach, I explained that we had something called a uterus inside
us with two delicate tubes leading to the eggs.
Once an egg had a seed (blessedly there were no questions regarding the
origin of the seed) it grew inside of the uterus, which stretched and grew
right along with the baby. “Oh” says
she, “And then when the baby needs to breathe it comes out! Right mom?” I
answered in the affirmative and then did something for which I have no
explanation. I should have simply kissed
her forehead and bid my darling a good night.
But no, I just had to open my mouth and ask the question whose answer
still makes my head spin. “And do you
know how the baby comes out?” I nonchalantly say to my child. Doesn’t seem so bad, really, except that you
have offered your dear little child the opportunity to say ANYTHING, which
means that anything is what you must be prepared for. “Of course” she says, rolling her eyes as
though I am a little slow, “The baby either bursts out of the mom’s belly
button, with all of her organs and stuff (but the mommy gets frozen so she
doesn’t feel it) or she can have it na’chrul and the mom just has to poop the
baby out her butt.” Needless to say, I
spent several moments blinking dumbly at my little angel, and attempting to
form words with a talker which was no longer connected to my thinker. I managed to get her tucked snugly off to
dreamland, but here I sit wrapped in a blanket, hot cup of tea in hand, gently
rocking back and forth in an effort to soothe the shattered remains of the
fairy tale of her in my mind. I have
decided that I am simply going to pray that it will be some time before this
naturally awkward conversation comes up again and also that I will have
discovered some better methods, or just be ludicrously drunk when it
happens.
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