When I was in first grade, this kid named Trent in my class was one of those little shitlords hellbent on ruining Santa for everyone. In hindsight, I think things were not going so hot at home for Trent, but it was a real scandal in Mrs. Cummins’ room.
My friend Emily and I spent one recess stalking around the playground, dismantling Trent’s arguments in cold clouds of breath. By the end of that day, I no longer believed in Santa Claus and his fantastical trip around the globe. In doing the work of being Santa’s lawyer, it became evident to me that it was all made up. I was crushed. I think I threw up in one of those miniature elementary school toilets.
Emily’s belief was fortified by this encounter with a doubter. Santa was realer than ever. She felt bad for Trent, she told me. He was missing out on so much happiness and he was making other kids feel bad. We were, all three of us, six years old.
I just got an email from my son’s teacher that tomorrow will be his last day of in-person school until ???
He will have spent six days total in a classroom since March 13. I will be mad about this for the rest of my life. At some point, someone will tell me I need to move on and I will actually eat them. I will unhinge my jaws and grind them up horribly in my teeth and I will turn them to slurry with the acids of my body.
I’ve had two conversations with my son about God in the last week, both related to the Christian holiday of Christmas, have you heard of it? The deal is that Nick and I were both raised Christian with varying levels of fervor by our respective families of origin and neither of us felt that the belief system really “took,” even as kids. So when we had our first kid, we decided without formalizing it that we would raise him without religion. Kids are pretty moral! Their obsession with fairness seems inborn, they often tell on themselves and break rules just to get you to reinforce the rule. But it is trippy to explain God to someone who has never in their life encountered the concept, in the case of my five-year-old.
Nick was stammering through an explanation of a light-up nativity we saw on a neighborhood walk. “There’s another Christmas…that’s about a family…who traveled to have a baby..” And I took it from there. “And a lot of people thought that the baby was going to be really great, almost like a superhero. And so it was important. Some people believe that.” No way to describe the divine that isn’t patronizing.
“Another Christmas.” It does feel like another Christmas at this point. I haven’t attended a Christmas Eve mass in at least ten years.
But we can never just chill, so Nick and I, in our Subaru dad and NPR mom element, started talking about different winter celebrations around the world and how everyone likes to light lots of lights when it’s cold and dark outside. Desi was fully not listening by this point. We were stage-acting an idea of thoughtful parenting, patting our own backs in a round forever.
When my son asks me a tough question, I absolutely choke. Even if I have thought about how I’d answer it in advance. He always forms the question in an unexpected way and I spend the rest of the day relitigating the conversation in my head. I need to get over the idea that I will deliver a sage, crisp mini-sermon and he will be set straight on that topic for life. It’s going to be one long conversation parceled into scraps that unfurl over years, if I’m lucky enough that he still asks me questions as he grows. And he gets to believe whatever he wants anyway.
It’s naive but I used to think the government would basically always “work,” or at least for people like me. I can’t imagine ever believing that again.
The second conversation about God is when my son asked if a building in our neighborhood was a school. “It’s a church,” I told him, and he asked me what that was. “It’s a house of worship,” I said, which is a stupid thing to say to a five-year-old, but I was trying to tighten up a more kindergarten-level explanation in my head.
“What does ‘worship’ mean?”
I told him that I didn’t really know how to explain it, which was the truth.
yr mate,
Evie
📣Some great news I wanted to share!📣 You may remember the friend I interviewed earlier this year about having her embryo transfer postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19. Jenn is pregnant now and due in May and I am so happy about it!!!
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I almost never feel compelled to comment on something but I just read this and I wanted to say that I feel seen by almost every paragraph here. THANK YOU