That Post Where We Talk About Why My Kids Think I'm A Fraud

The Boy Child is the kind of kid, that when his feet hit the ground in the morning, he takes off running and doesn't stop until after he is in bed at night.

But not that long ago, he surprised me by waking up and climbing into my bed to snuggle. Not wanting to waste any of that precious time, I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about life.

"So buddy," I inquired. "Tell me about your friends at school. Who do you like to play with?"

"I play with Samuel" he replied. (Not his real name)

"Oh," I said, hoping for a bit more. "And what is Samuel like?"

Being six, The Boy Child went for the most obvious answer, and began to describe Samuel's physical appearance to me. "He has black skin and brown hair..."

Thinking that this might be the perfect time to expand on his observances, to include a discussion about looking past skin color, I said in my teaching-mom-voice, "isn't it neat that we all look different? The only thing that matters is" and then he interrupted me.

It Was An Accident, I Swear

OK. So something happened today.

You see, when the baby was born, he had kind of a folded ear. He must have been laying on it in the womb or something. No biggie, the ENT just taped it down for a few weeks. The worst part of it was that he needed to have a bit of his hair shaved off so that the tape would stick.

Anyway, the ear was fixed and the tape came off, but now he had a patch of hair missing, that just looked strange.

It Mattered In The End

****** TRIGGER WARNING******

This post deals with the subject of death, and although I think that the overall message is worth discussing, I respectfully wish to warn you that some may find this post to be upsetting. Should you choose not to proceed through this one, I look forward to your return next time.

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Towards the end of winter last year, we had an unseasonably nice day that also happened to fall on a weekend. Finally able to enjoy venturing out of the house again, The Guy and I were looking for something fun to do. But after contemplating how crowded the zoo would be, and realizing that most of the farms near us were still closed, I suggested that we do something different, and visit the local historic cemetery.

Yes I did.

“A… cemetery…” The Guy said slowly, as if he were trying to mentally absorb the meaning of the words.

“Yes” I said. “Where they bury people.”

“Why would we do that?” he asked.

“Why not?” I asked back.

And because he is exactly my type of person, off we went to the cemetery, taking the kids with us.

We spent the next four hours wandering through the rows of headstones, while the kids did crayon rubbings over the words. The Guy and I chatted about the husbands and wives who were buried side by side, and contemplated what life must have been like for them to have either lived decades without each other, or passed away only days apart. We saw the headstones of families that clearly had died in wealth, while others eluded to the fact that they most likely died while living in poverty. There were men with multiple wives resting next to them; proof of the intimate moments they had gone on to lead — one after another — without the one that they had left behind. And then there were families with centuries of descendants who had died decades before others were born, all grouped together; sharing nothing more in common then a last name, an ending fate, and the fact that their physical resting place will spent forever together.