Life Cereal...And Life and Death
Yesterday morning, the kids and I were in the kitchen eating breakfast. I had the radio tuned to NPR and was half-listening to the news. The reports were dominated by the Saddam Hussein trial, which had started while we were sleeping. I wasn't catching everything that was said (what mother of two ever does?), but I did hear something about the first witness, whose testimony denounced the murder of a 14-year-old boy. With my piecemeal attentiveness, I came to presume that this boy was the witness's son.
The news moved on to other slightly less appalling subjects, but the cast of characters in our kitchen did not.
"Mama," our boy said, "how old was that boy who was killed?"
Oh my. I forget that they're listening all the time. "He was 14," I said.
"Well, how do you think he was killed?" he asked.
This morbid line of questioning did not surprise me much. At present, the little guy is into playing "rescue center" with his Duplos. He builds axes for chopping victims free from burning boats and assembles "journeys" (his adulteration of "gurneys") for transporting the wounded. He also asks where ambulances or fire trucks are going when we hear their sirens in the distance, and when I offer up as innocuous an answer as I can think of, he presses for other possibilities: "What ELSE do you think might have happened, Mama?" It's not unusual for him to request three or four variations.
So when he wanted details on this boy's death, I responded as matter-of-factly as I could. "Somebody probably shot him," I said.
True to form, he asked for more. "Well, how ELSE do you think he could have been killed, Mama?" he said.
I paused before responding as tersely as possible. "He could have been strangled," I said quickly, certain that this was not healthy breakfast banter but not at all sure how to redirect the conversation. I didn't want to discourage him from asking questions, but I also didn't want to terrify the poor kid. As far as he knows, Iraq could be three blocks from here.
There was a brief silence as the kids continued to munch their cereal, and then our firstborn, as though trying to convince himself, said, "I don't think that boy really died, Mama."
Oh, how I wanted to believe him.
The news moved on to other slightly less appalling subjects, but the cast of characters in our kitchen did not.
"Mama," our boy said, "how old was that boy who was killed?"
Oh my. I forget that they're listening all the time. "He was 14," I said.
"Well, how do you think he was killed?" he asked.
This morbid line of questioning did not surprise me much. At present, the little guy is into playing "rescue center" with his Duplos. He builds axes for chopping victims free from burning boats and assembles "journeys" (his adulteration of "gurneys") for transporting the wounded. He also asks where ambulances or fire trucks are going when we hear their sirens in the distance, and when I offer up as innocuous an answer as I can think of, he presses for other possibilities: "What ELSE do you think might have happened, Mama?" It's not unusual for him to request three or four variations.
So when he wanted details on this boy's death, I responded as matter-of-factly as I could. "Somebody probably shot him," I said.
True to form, he asked for more. "Well, how ELSE do you think he could have been killed, Mama?" he said.
I paused before responding as tersely as possible. "He could have been strangled," I said quickly, certain that this was not healthy breakfast banter but not at all sure how to redirect the conversation. I didn't want to discourage him from asking questions, but I also didn't want to terrify the poor kid. As far as he knows, Iraq could be three blocks from here.
There was a brief silence as the kids continued to munch their cereal, and then our firstborn, as though trying to convince himself, said, "I don't think that boy really died, Mama."
Oh, how I wanted to believe him.
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 10:00 PM
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