It is 8:11am. The sun beams through the windshielf and with my right hand I’m rooting around for my sunglasses in my bottomless purse. “It’s Friday, guys!” I chatter to the kids. “The weekend starts today!”
“Star Wars pancakes tomorrow!” shouts LittleMan.
“Dee-too-dee-too! Yay!” chimes in Babygirl, clapping.
“It’s R-2-D-2, Babygirl!” corrects LittleMan. He finds my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Mommy, I keep trying to correct her.”
The person in front of me is looking for parking and has slowed to a crawl. I switch on the left indicator to go around him, glancing quickly over my shoulder.
And then.
“Mommy, what happens to you when you die?” pipes LittleMan from the back seat. “They put you under the ground, right? You know, there are a lot of pipes under the ground, and the tunnels where the trains go. Do you have to be down there with the tunnels?”
A pedestrian jaywalks a few feet ahead. I gently apply the brakes. I am unprepared. But I respond.
“There’s are special underground places they put people when they die, honey. It’s called burying. And not everyone does that. Not everyone goes underground.”
“Where else do they go?”
I stop at a red light, crack the window, and shake my head to clear my thoughts. As grim as I find the notion of spending eternity in a MUNI tunnel, I have a feeling my 4-year-old isn’t going to take to the cremation thing. All he’s going to hear is that some people are burned up. So I sidestep.
“You know, it’s not as important what happens to people’s bodies when they die, love. It’s important what happens to their souls, to their spirits.”
Green light. I turn left up Broadway and zigzag through the delivery trucks as we approach Columbus.
“So what happens to your spirit, then?” he presses. I remind myself, for the ten-millionth time, that I really need to think through my answers more carefully.
“Well, it goes into the sky…into the atmosphere, and you become like a part of the people who love you and remember you…You know, love, I think this is a good conversation for us to have at home, maybe with Daddy.”
“Why?”
“Well, I have a feeling he would want to be a part of it, and anyway, you have a long, long time before you need to worry about any of this.”
Driving up Columbus, we listen to the radio: it’s retro Tears for Fears and I sing along a little bit. I hear the telltale click-clatter of Babygirl’s pacifier dropping between the car seat and the door. “Uh-oh! Pah-tchi!” she cries. We are nearing her daycare. I pull to the curb, throw on the hazards, and scurry around to the passenger side, locating and pocketing the paci before she sees it.
“Hola!” she sings as I extricate her from the safety restraints and carry her to the door. “Bee-ahs!”
“Buenos dias, bonita!” responds her caregiver.
“Ciao, Mama,” she says, waving her hand. “Bye-bye, Mommy.”
“Ciao, baby.” I kiss her little hand and hurry back down the steps.
They hit you when you least expect it, these 4- and 5-year-olds, their little minds just beginning to wrap around beginnings and endings and yesterday and tomorrow and whether the birthday comes before Christmas or the other way around. They know that Doc Hudson is in Cars, but not Cars 2, and that Lightning misses him; they don’t know that’s because Paul Newman, who voiced the character, died between the two and Pixar wisely did not attempt to replace him. They know Obi-Wan is slain by Darth Vader, but then he becomes more powerful than before and visits Luke often. Life, like art, is full of contradictions: If the police are good guys, why do they carry guns? If I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, why do I have to look the bus driver in the eye and say Good Morning?
I often feel that I am flying blind in the gray area. Honest, but not too much so. Not yet.
LittleMan is still quiet when I get back in the car. “You know, Mommy,” he says thoughtfully, “I don’t think I want to marry with Rosie anymore.” She is his classmate; for several months he has been rather smitten.
“That’s okay, LittleMan. You have a lot of time to figure that one out.”
A bus slows to a stop in front of us, just shy of the turn into the school parking lot, and I pull a little guerrilla move into the opposite lane to get around it.
“The thing is, that I think I want to marry with one of my other friends,” he continues, “because those are the people I have fun playing with right now.”
“Well, why don’t you just focus on playing?” I suggest. “Marriage is a whole other thing.”
I stifle my school-parking-lot road rage, sighing ruefully at the moms clustered in the middle of the congested turnaround area and the dads who are hogging parking spaces while they check email on their phones. Glance at the passenger seat, make a mental check of the things we need to remember: tuition check, Letter-of-the-Week envelope, lunchbox.
As I pull into a spot LittleMan asks, “The thing is, Mommy, can boys marry other boys?”
I kill the ignition. In my head I am thinking, Actually, LittleMan, in the state of California boys can’t marry other boys, but in several states they can, so that’s confusing, but it’s going to the Supreme Court now, so hopefully by the time you are actually thinking about getting married you’ll have options no matter where you live. Okay?
But I don’t say any of that. I turn to him, peering over the driver’s seat, and I answer from my heart.
“You can marry anyone you want to, love — anyone — as long as they want to marry you back. It’s a two-way street; both people have to agree to it. I would say, for now, you should just plan on playing with as many new friends as you can and leave the marrying to the grown-ups.”
He takes a big breath and his mouth drops open. “I didn’t know that! I can marry anyone! That’s so funny!” I realize with mixed feelings that my child will very likely be bringing his mother’s liberal political views to circle time this morning.
We unload our various bags and backpacks and the uniform sweater with all the buttons missing. I re-tie LittleMan’s shoes with double-knots. As we stand at his cubby and I fish his midmorning snack out of the lunchbox he tugs on my sleeve. “Mommy, I love you but I have to ask you something.”
I look yearningly at the classroom door. Is there someone in there who has some answers?
“Mommy, will you please bring my Star Wars X-wing fighter shirt for baseball practice?”
I grin and drop to my knees, and pull him into a bear hug.
“Yes.”
Leave a Comment