A Reminder

Perhaps my eldest's fascination with life cycles began last year in Junior Kindergarten when they learned about the life cycle of the butterfly but it has continued into the summer.  He's also constantly asking questions about when my husband and I were little:  what did we play with?  Did we have video games?  What did we watch on tv?  What did we wear, eat, where did we go?  Did we ride a bike?  What colour was it?  How much money did the tooth fairy give us when we were kids?

ONE DOLLAR!??

Yep AND there was no such things as remote controls or household computers, there was such a thing as penny candy, we never wore helmets OR life jackets, we listened to music on a contraption that included a needle running around a large round piece of vinyl, and there was only one kid's channel that played Sesame Street, Hammy the Hamster, Mr Dress Up, The Polka Dot Door and The Green Forest in rotation.

It's all pretty shocking to him much like when we were kids and our parents told us there weren't such things as tv's, microwaves, their teachers hit them with rulers and they walked 20 miles to school uphill in snowstorms every single day of their childhood.

But this newest interest of life cycles is quite amusing to me.  It's quite simple as he explained to me on the way to summer camp this morning.  His random observation came at a red light and I turned the music down to listen,

"So human's are first babies, then kids, then teenagers, then adults, then old people and then you die."

"Okay.  Yes that's about right."  There was no way that I was going to get into how babies begin as a teeny tiny cell.  I held my breath hoping to GOD he wouldn't ask me for the 50th time how babies are born and where they come from and "Mumma how do they come OUT of the belly?".

Adrian blurts out, "Daddy is old."  Phew...the origin of babies subject had been averted for the time being.

I laugh, "No, Daddy is not old."

"Well he's a little bit old."

Perhaps I should have assured him that Daddy wasn't going anywhere but I was too busy being amused by his observation that his father is an old man when in fact he looks nothing the part.  As I giggled at my son's words and turned up the music, picturing the look on my husband's face if he was in the car with us, Adrian's heart may have been worried. After all, didn't he just explain to me you get old and then you die?  But maybe not, it's possible I am just over analyzing the conversation with my ever thinking 5 year old boy.  

Maybe.  

Sometimes as parents, we miss the cues that our children give us.

Only in retrospect do we realize that they were trying to ask us or tell us something more.

Today was a reminder for me.

To remember to keep my eyes open wide, my ears open wider and my heart and mind the widest of all.