“Familiarity breeds contempt~and children.” Mark Twain
All parents know it will happen sooner or later. The question. THAT question. You know the one: “Where do babies come from?” Inquiring minds of sweet innocent children all over the world want to know. My own sweet child had a very inquisitive mind. She thought long and hard about things, and tried to figure them out for herself. Still does, in fact. I had always said that as a nurse, I wouldn’t tell stories like “The milkman brought you,” or “You were found under a cabbage leaf in the garden.” I would always tell her the truth about everything. Well, not EVERYTHING. I didn’t tell her that Santa Claus wasn’t real, but I should have, because a little boy in kindergarten blabbed and ruined the surprise anyway. She figured out the Easter Bunny on her own shortly after that. When she asked the question, I explained it as simply and as age appropriately as I possibly could. She listened intently, nodded her head and said, “Can I have my snack now?” Whew. That was easy. After telling her that she could always come to me with questions at any time, we went about our usual business after I gave myself a small pat on the back about my parenting skills. That was probably parenting mistake #754: Don’t pat yourself on the back or it will come back to bite you on your biggest asset. Flash forward a couple of weeks. We were in line at the grocery store on a Friday afternoon. It must have been payday, because all the lanes were filled with weary people and overflowing carts. It was in the days before everybody and his grandmother had a cell phone, so people were quietly chatting, looking at the ceiling in boredom, or tapping their feet impatiently. My daughter was doing her usual begging for a candy bar or a bag of Skittles, or whatever sugary temptation that some marketing genius put there just to drive parents stark raving mad by constantly having to say, “No.” “Because I said so!” “No.” “Because I said so, that’s why!” Anyhow, my sweet baby girl, in all her innocence, picked that exact moment to ask for more details about the birds and the bees. In a sweet, clear, and loud voice, she asked, “So I’ve been thinking. If there is an egg and there is some fertilizer, just how does the fertilizer get to the egg to make a baby?” The busy, payday Friday afternoon noises at the grocery store quieted, then stopped altogether. All eyes turned in our direction and all the cash registers stopped their busy noises. I swear, if there had been a spotlight, it would have shone brightly down on me as they waited for the answer. I swallowed hard, my mind racing. I began to perspire. “Well…, ” I said, “Well…in a very…special…way.” I quickly grabbed the biggest candy bar I could find and shoved it into her hands. Thankfully, she took the bribe. Everyone must have been holding their breath, because there was a loud collective sigh that seemed to echo throughout the store. Perhaps there was a smattering of quiet applause, or was it the sound of my first grey hairs popping through? We’ll never know.
“The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know because I have tested it.” Mark Twain
The Minnesota Farm Woman 