That was where it ended.
Until this morning.
"Ok Mama, I've been wondering, how will my special ingredient get to my wife?" asked my almost 6-year-old son after his wheat bread and Nutella breakfast. I took his hand, brought him to the bathroom where Daniel was getting ready for work, relayed the question to my husband, and took my leave.
From the dinette, where I tended to our two remaining sex-oblivious children, I could hear bits and pieces of the conversation I didn't think we would be having for a long, long time. Bright emerged from the bathroom and I looked into his face. Whew! He was a still a child. He reported to me what he had learned, as if he had just learned how snakes molt or how gravity keeps us from flying off into space. It was perfectly innocent for him, a mere fact of science, a puzzle solved in his mind. I told him to let his friends' parents be the ones to share this information with their children rather that hearing it from him. He understood that, and thought that was the way it should be.
And that is that. Bright knows the facts of life.
A friend with older children told me recently that the "tween" years are officially ages 8-12. Eight years old! Another friend pointed out to me the other day that in 5 years, Bright will be 11 and ready to start attending junior high youth group. YOUTH GROUP!?? IN FIVE YEARS!??
I asked a friend the other day, who is a recent college grad, how old of a guy she would date, and she said, "Oh, definitely no older than 25!"
It would appear that I am five years out of the young-adult dating range, five years from dropping my son off at youth group, and I now have a child who knows how babies are made. Will somebody please pass the calcium supplements and Oil of Olay? Middle age is moving in, and that is a fact of life.
