Things I Don't Like to Think About

1) How many ants are colonizing the inside of our walls right now (and where they'll emerge next)

2) Where I'm going to find 100 more hours to prep for next school year and earn my much-needed salary advancement units before August 15

3) Death.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to avoid thinking about any of these things lately...even though I made milkshakes for Bear and the girls the other night and have that cursed Kelis song stuck in my head ever since. You'd think that would've exterminated any and all other thoughts in there, but apparently I can mentally multi-task. (I could teach you, but I'd have to charge. La la, la la la...)

The first two items on that list are pretty self-explanatory; the third one isn't really surprising, either, but isn't always on the front burner of my brain. A couple of weeks ago, though, Keira asked me out of nowhere, "Mom? Are all these days we're having ever gonna end?"

I knew exactly what she meant, but I pretended not to. "What do you mean?"

"These days we keep having. Are they ever gonna end or are we always gonna have days?"

Luckily for me, Bear came home at that moment and his entrance distracted her...but not for long. A week or so later, I was driving the girls to gymnastics when she asked again. I thought for a minute and finally said, "Well...yes, there will probably always be days. When someone dies, they stop having days, but everyone else still keeps waking up every morning and having days."

She was quiet for a minute, and then asked, "But am I going to die?"

Since I was driving, she couldn't see the tears falling from under my sunglasses. I tried to sound reassuring: "Well, all people die when they get very old or very sick, or hurt very badly. But not for a long, long time."

Kiwi started to cry. "But I don't wanna die!"

Seriously, surgery without anesthesia would have been less torturous than this conversation. (Also, I'd like to go ahead and make that #4 on my list.) I didn't want to lie to her, but telling the truth felt so harsh, and we don't necessarily have any "...but we all get to meet up again in Heaven" type of beliefs to soften the blow. Her Christian preschool has taught her a little bit of that, and I've always just told her that yes, that's what some people believe; and some people believe other things; and some people, like Mommy and Daddy, aren't really sure. It was tempting to just throw that out there anyway to make her feel better--after all, I'm 31 and have a hell of a time trying to imagine and deal with the idea of life just, poof, ending, so why should I expect a 4-year-old to even begin to wrap her head around it?--but it gave me the same feeling I get when she asks me questions about Santa or the Tooth Fairy: that desire to tell her what she wants to hear, but feeling uncomfortable about telling her something I know (or suspect, in this case) isn't true.

Anyway, what I ended up saying was, "You don't need to worry about that at all right now. You won't be very old for a long, long time...so long, you won't even be able to remember today anymore. Now, what do you think you're gonna do at gymnastics today?" I might as well have yelled, "Look, it's Chuck E. Cheese!!" or waved pom-poms in her face, so lacking in subtlety was my distraction technique. But, she went for it, and hasn't brought it up again.

Yet.

A couple of days ago, though, the topic reared its ugly head for me again when we found out my dad's estranged father had passed away. Though we'd only met him a few times and hadn't seen him in years, my siblings, parents, and I went to his memorial on Saturday. Let me just say that sitting through a service for someone with the same name as my dad, with almost the same face (only, obviously, 20+ years older), was surreal, and not in a good way. As I listened to the minister talk about how my "grandfather" (I put that term in quotes because I barely knew him) would someday be resurrected and wake up to join all of his loved ones again, I felt like he was doing exactly what I wanted to do for Keira: telling them what they wanted to hear, in order to comfort them. And those who belonged to this church believed these things, because they wanted to and it made them feel better. I can't say I blamed them, but I couldn't join them, either. I'm glad we went, though, and even more glad that I could come home and try to get the entire idea out of my head again.

The Kelis song? Unfortunately, I haven't been so lucky there. "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard/And they're like, it's better than yours..."

ARGGGGHHHHH.