We’d hit the open
road, more or less on time, and deeply puzzled by how the van had become so
overflowing. Car trips with children, are at best, an exercise in hope and
delusion. Yet there is no better way for a family to bond, laugh, discover together
once stripped of schedules, routines, and creature comforts. Families grow
together on road trips, and growing isn’t always pain free.
Our 2 kids were still
small on this trip. Our oldest only six or seven. And we had just begun to
understand just how much he (like every child) is capable of understanding. I
am an educator but the wisdom and capability of children never ceases to amaze
me. Overall our parenting style could best be described as a mix of ‘crash
position’ and ‘going on gut instinct and figuring out how to pay for the
therapy later’ So when his little voice, still so high and sweet and ringing
out like bells, asked “Mommy, where did I come from?” I was caught off guard. I
was flooded with bittersweet emotions. Wasn’t he still too young to hear this? Is
lying about this a kindness meant to create wonder and joy, like Santa or the
Tooth Fairy? We had never held back, he knew about pregnancy, he knew there was
no stork, he knew the vocabulary like penis and vagina ….. he was obviously
searching for more. I looked over at my husband, this man I loved so much, to
find him trying hard to suppress a grin and pretend he hadn’t heard the
question.
“Well” I stammered, “you
know a man fertilizes an egg in a woman’s body and if conditions are right that
fertilized egg can grow into a baby.”
“Yes” he said.
“OK, so a man and a
woman can have sex, that’s what they do to fertilize the egg, and have a baby.
It takes about 38 weeks to grow a baby in a woman’s uterus and then it is born
through her vagina or sometimes a Dr has to cut into her body and take the baby
out, that’s how you were born.” I was failing him, I knew it. There was so much
more to say, so much more to ensure he understood the world as it is and could
venture into it kindly and with empathy. “But when people don’t want to have a
baby, there’s things they can do so they can still have sex and not have a
baby. Because it’s nice to have sex. It feels nice. So people don’t just have
sex to have babies.”
“Okaaaaay” he says.
I am now outside my
body looking down at this woman trying so hard to impart a meaningful lesson to
this boy’s earnest question. She continued on “but if someone wants to have a
baby but can’t, or doesn't want to make one in their own body, they can adopt a
baby. We have many friends and relatives who are adopted. Sometime a couple can’t
have a baby, or sometimes a man or a woman would like to have a baby but don’t
have a partner they want to create a baby with. Sometimes two men are a couple,
and love each other, but their bodies aren’t able to make a baby together so
they adopt a baby. Sometimes two women love each other and do the same thing,
or they find a man to help them have a baby from one of their bodies. There’s
so very many ways to make a family. Some families have one parent, some have
two, some have step parents too. Some families have two moms or two dads, and
some families are just grown ups and they don’t want children. There are MANY
ways to make a family. But YOU, and your family …. We made you and your brother
with our bodies. That’s how we made our family. I just really want you to
understand that is not the only way to make a family.” I have poured as much
love and honestly into these words as I could muster. I wish we had had a book,
or a website, or a big cozy couch to curl up on as I shared all this, but we were
in the car and this now and forever would be the place he took this step in his
understanding. I hoped I had ‘nailed it’.
I looked over at my
husband, this man I love, and he turned his face to me with the same perplexed,
stunned, horrified look he gave me when our son, this same boy, first filled
his little yellow sleeper full of poop all up the back and out the neck, and
all down the left leg into the toes. His eyes, however, I’m pretty sure said “you
nailed it.”
And what of my son?
Had I overwhelmed him? Had I said too much? Enough? Was he understanding the
over arching truth I was trying to convey? Was he ready to carry all this?
“Umm, Mom.” He said,
in that sweet, light voice which still rang like bells. “Mom, Thank you. But
what I meant was …….. I mean what I was wondering was ……. WHERE was I born?”
“Oh” I said. I am back
in my body now and it weighs 9000 pounds. I am registering my husband’s laugh
that he is trying to pass of as coughing and choosing not to hear or even look
at him. “Victoria, honey. You were born in Victoria.”
“OK, thanks. I couldn’t
remember.” He replied. His face so sweet, his heart so light, his world so
unchanged ………… maybe I had managed to teach him all that, without saying all
that, after all? My pride was only slightly bruised, and my heart was very
full. Road trips are a place for growing together, or maybe just realizing you
have already been growing that way all along.
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