The question in Stuff

I mentioned here the other day the way that Harry thinks about and ponders every little thing and it got me remembering an experience with her. All parents probably have stories about funny/adorable questions that they were asked by their kids, but really aren’t that funny and adorable to anyone else, so I realize this might be an example of that.

I would guess she was 8 or 9 years old. It was a weekend evening and we were sitting together on the old green couch down in the basement. I’m not sure why we were down there and what we were doing. My guess would be I was doing something crafty like crocheting and she was reading a book or just hanging out keeping me company.

She had spent the previous weekend visiting my parents. This matters to the story.

We were sitting there and she asks me, out of nowhere, “How does a woman’s body know whether or not she’s married?”

I remember opening and closing my mouth a few times as I formulated responses and then changed my mind about them. It was such a confusing question. I finally settled on something like, “What do you mean by that, sweetheart?” I didn’t want it to sound like I was judging her question as absurd, I just didn’t understand.

She said, “Grandma said that only married women have babies.” Ugh. Why. Why would my mother say something like that to my daughter? Specifically knowing that I have three children and have never been married? What a confusing thing to put into her head!

My parents are religious, particularly the religious types that want everyone to believe what they believe. So much so that they’d tell my kids stuff that not only is contradictory to what I tell them, but also stuff like this that is in direct opposition to my own life and what my kids see everyday. I don’t need that happening to young brains trying to figure out the world.

I responded, “Babies need to have a mother and a father, but that’s not necessarily the same thing as people needing to be married.”

She nodded. I could tell she was still confused. She asked, “But how does the mother’s body know there is a father? Why don’t women get pregnant when there is no father?”

It dawned on me suddenly that this was actually a where do babies come from? question, just asked in a roundabout way. As we talked more, I discovered it was her understanding that women just became pregnant randomly. Like getting heartburn. She backed up this theory with the evidence that every time she heard about someone being pregnant it was revealed as if it was a surprise.

So if women just randomly got pregnant, and only married women get pregnant, it lead her to what seemed like the next logical question: how does the woman’s body know?

We talked about it. Straight down to the gruesome details. Penises and vaginas and sperm and eggs. She thought it was gross, which I suppose is what was expected. She said she never wanted to do anything like that and I told her she might change her mind someday. She suggested maybe that if she wanted to have a baby someone might just do it to her while she’s sleeping so she didn’t have to be aware of it.

I almost responded, “Honey, that’s called rape,” but I decided it was enough grown-up talk for the evening.