One thing I have found as a parent is that the questions never stop. Not only is my life full of near-constant requests for food, drink, entertainment, assistance with clothing, toileting and to stop the littlest person pushing the button on the DVD player but there are also the deep and meaningful ones. I admit that I was initially prepared for the constant Why questions and they haven't eventuated but other ones have.
D has had a bit of a thing about fire for a while. Not that he is a pyromaniac thankfully but he's very into fire fighters. He was part of some sort of safety talk at preschool about fire safety. That week he was absolutely paranoid about something spontaneously combusting. From then on in we had questions about whether ANYTHING would cause a fire. Water and paper. Paper and crayon. Wood and water. Concrete and food. If he touched something (you name it, a rock, dirt, a piece of paper, his plate). My attempts to get him to think about it himself were in vain, he needed the reassurance that we were not going to burn down any second.
Then there was the time he must have thought he had super powers or something...
"Mummy, did I break the guitar when I touched the case?"
"Did you knock it over?"
"No"
"Then it will be fine"
"Are you sure I didn't?"
"Yes sweetie, if you didn't knock it over then you wouldn't have broken it"
"But I think I did"
"Trust me, you didn't"
"But how do you know?"
"Because to break something you actually have to touch it and push it over and you didn't"
"Really?"
"Really".
And you should have heard the conversations at the dinner table when I was pregnant with A. Is the baby wearing clothes? Nappies? How does it get food? How will it come out? Can I watch?
C is also going through a questioning phase at the moment. Recently we had a family member die so we had LOTS of questions about death. When was I going to die? When was she going to die? When will Nana and Granddad die? What happens when we die? a question which D answered with all his five year old authority that we go to be with God but we don't come alive after three days because only Jesus did that. Truthfully I was relieved that he answered, not that I didn't know what to say but that I am now confident that D had realised that not everyone resurrects after three days which was a problem after the Easter story got a bit confusing a while back.
Today though I had a beautiful one.
"Mummy do you love me?"
"Yes I do, I love you very much?"
"Why?"
"Because you belong to us. I have loved you from the moment you were born".
Then she gave me her special 'Mummy and C smile'. She put her face towards me and closed her eyes and gave me the tiniest butterfly kiss. C is very sensitive to scent. And often when she cuddles in she will inhale my scent, like I would do when she was a baby and I'd smell her gorgeous milky newborn smell. When she kisses me like that, it is like she is inhaling my essence. And we had a proper cuddle, her soft cheek pressed against mine and for a moment it was just us.
It is those little moments that can carry me through the more challenging days.
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