At bedtime tonight, I went in to talk about E's day. When she's in the right mood, these talks can end up going in many unexpected directions and can take a long time. She comes by it naturally (I love 10:00 talks), and I love these bedtime convos with Miss E.
Usually, we're both lying on the bed, sometimes she's lying with her head on my hip looking up at the ceiling as she talks, and I never know what jewel of thought will pop out of her mouth. Her questions tonight took us through weddings, about being a flower girl and what you do for that, who is in weddings and what they're called, why you don't get to pick out what you wear cause the bride picks it out (she asked if anyone ever gets to pick out their own clothes), how Mama II is Beverly's mom ("So, when she goes to visit, she is visiting her mom?"), other mom's and dad's in our extended family, being engaged, having a fiance, she asked why people wait a long time to get married once they decided to get married. Somehow she asked if the people who are going to get married are friends. I said they were special friends because they've decided to get married, and she confirmed that they are indeed friends. She said she wanted Graham to be her husband and was very sad when I told her he was already her daddy so he couldn't be her husband ... "But I don't ever want to live without him." I told her that was fine. Lots of families live with grandparents and parents and grandchildren in the house. Then she said, "So, people get married to their friends. I'm going to marry .... ... ... ... Keegan. I think I'll probably marry Keegan. Maybe." I told her she didn't have to decide that for a long, long time.
At some point, she wanted to know how babies were born and asked me to tell her the whole story of how she was born, everything that happened at the hospital. Craziness. She wanted to know how babies come out (in case you're wondering, I explained the stomach muscles pushing like squeezing a tube of toothpaste - weird, I know, but it works and she liked the explanation). She wanted to know about medicine and whether things hurt. She had decided she never wanted to have babies because she remembered someone telling her that babies are sometimes cut out of a mother's stomach. So, I explained that, and how medicine helps and the body can in some ways make its own medicine and that the hurt goes away and that having the baby is the most amazing, wonderful thing in the entire world. To which she said, God is the most amazing thing. So, I conceded the point and told her having a baby is the most amazing thing in this world.
After about 45 minutes, I told E she could have one more question and she asked, "How does everything get built?"
Seriously. She meant everything in the world. So, I told her about people going to school and learning what pieces go together to build houses and cars and lights and computers and figuring out new ideas and having other people teach you. She asked if boys and girls build things. So I told her that yes boys and girls learn how to build things and that she could even learn how to make a computer some day, that she might be a computer engineer. To which she responded, "How do they build computers?" Try answering that one.
As I was about to get up since that was her last question, she said, "I just have one more question to ask you, something very, very important." So of course I had to let her continue ... "How was God made?"
Seriously? That was her "just one more thing" question. So, I asked what she meant, and she said, "I just don't understand, because everybody is born and everything is made by somebody. So, who made God? When did God start? Because, he doesn't have a dad, right? I just don't get it." So, I told her God has always existed. She wasn't quite satisfied, so I asked her if she wanted me to get her Daddy to see what he thought. She agreed.
By the time I walked into the den, told Graham the situation, and then had him go back in her room, she was asleep.
p.s. Random fact ... ... E's current favorite number used to mean an outrageously large amount is One-hundred-Fifty-nine-Twenty. Sometimes, she'll extend it with an "eleven" added on the end.
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