“Mama, why you buy me?”
I was caught off guard this morning by 4 y.o. C. Like many children, he has a talent for the profound. And always at the worst times.
So, let’s back up as to how this started. See, 4 y.o. C. loves the world. Everyone is a friend he hasn’t met yet. And people he loves need hugs. Sometimes kisses. We have been working on asking before we spontaneously hug people that aren’t in our family. Of course the time to bring this up while I’m getting ready for work in the morning. Okay, so who is his family? Um… so listed his grandmothers, his aunties, his older brother, his father, me. What about E.? (our children minder who’s cared for him since birth) Um, okay. E. counts as family for him, I say.
“What makes a family?” C. asks.
Wow. Oh wow. “You know, there aren’t actually rules on that. All families look different. But this is your family.”
He was quiet.
“Why you buy me? Is it because I have blue eyes?”
Had he somehow gleaned from baby photos and his brother that we selected and paid for him from the Rotunda, as if it were somehow Dublin’s premier purveyor of quality babies? Has he realised he looks like his brother now and rather than genetics, he has apparently assumed that, like dishes or drapes, I wanted a matching set?
I pause. There is, of course, the very obvious fact here that I didn’t “buy” him from the Rotunda or at all. And that’s not really where babies come from. But I realise that that the answer he is looking for isn’t the logistics of how to acquire a baby. He’s looking for an answer about why he is in this family. Pointing out that he wasn’t chosen or selected, especially given that I know he has friends who have diverse family types, a quick “how babies are made”, oddly, is actually an completely irrelevant answer to the real question being asked. I pause again.
“Because you are mine and I love you and you are just perfect the way you are.”
It’s not the question to why I “buy” him, but the answer to the question that deeper, inarticulated question he was really asking:
Would I be in your family if it were about choice rather than chance?” Most definitely.
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