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Resurrection

On Friday morning we had a mini-life-and-death-crisis. As Clownfish and I descended the front steps, we saw two birdies on the ground on the driveway. One was on its back, its legs up, not moving. The other was right side up but unable to move other than feeble twitches. By their position and status, I could only assume they had flown into the driver side window of my car and . . . thud. They were small grey birds -- titmouse, I thought, and then incongruously titmice? -- when Clownfish started moving toward them.

"Stay back, honey."
"But I want to touch them."
"They're wild birds, not like Ben the Bird [my sister's parrot], we can't touch them."
"Why aren't they flying away?"
"I think they're hurt."
"I want to help them. Can we get bandages?"

(Walking him around to his side of the car and buckling him in, steeling myself for the death conversation. He had learned the word kill at pre-school, robots will kill you, so we had talked about it a little before. But in his short life so far he has not seen death, and I have yet to inflict Charlotte's Web or the like on him yet, so he didn't have the vocabulary.)

"No honey, I don't think bandages will work."

We talked a little about death and dying as I strapped him in. I remember thinking "I am doing this badly." He seemed to understand somewhat but was very sad that Mommy could not make the birds better. Meanwhile, I was thinking that I had to be careful when pulling out the car not to run the poor things over, and to tell Bullshark to get home ahead of us to remove the corpses from the driveway -- if the neighborhood cats didn't get them first -- before Clownfish and I got home. We'd talk more that night maybe. Maybe get a book?

I walked back around to my side of the car.

The bird on its back was now upright.

It was moving.

I ran back to unstrap Clownfish, to explain that Mommy was wrong, the birdies were just hurt not dead, and they were getting better on their own.

By the time he got out, he saw one bird fly away, and the other do a short-hop flight to the garage roof.

I hadn't planned on explaining Easter to him this year, but maybe he's got the vocabulary now.

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No I am not actually going to explain the Crucifixion and Resurrection to my child this year.

Full post as published by Butterflyfish on March 22, 2008 (boomark / email).