Tell Me Why

Every night, just before my six year-old son drifts off to sleep, he tends to ask me the most profound questions about the world around us. One evening it was, "who was the first person alive?" -- another night: "how do you make rocks?" (Hopefully, my abriged explanations of evolution and the big bang weren't too convoluted and lame...) Last night he wondered "how do you make glass?" (Answer: melt sand.) We've long ago had the discussion about how babies are made (including the logical follow-up question about how it feels to have sex), and the exact way we are all born (his response: "that's gross!"). Nuts and bolts stuff. (Inquisitive minds want to know.)

Recently, he asked my wife if I ever met the woman I "came out of" (i.e.: my birth mother). I was given up for adoption at birth, and my son has been trying to wrap his head around this -- out of a genuine concern for me -- for some time. Who can blame him. It is a weird concept -- and a threatening one too (are you going to give me up too at some point?). But already he is accepting of non-traditional families -- one of his friends at school has two dads, and two women friends of ours are married (by a minister -- to hell with what the state thinks!). So adoption is not that much of a stretch, and I'm proud as hell that he embraces diversity and is not scared of people who are different. When Max was much younger, my wife picked up a book called "Little Miss Spider" by David Kirk, which is about a baby spider who can't find her mother after being born (it's not alluded to, but I think she's dead -- very Disney-like), and is rescued from being eaten by birds by a beetle who becomes her adoptive mother. The good message: "For finding your mother, there's one certain test. You must look for the creature who loves you the best."

Not bad advice for seeking out all of our relationships, eh?