It began innocently enough, as these things often do. I’m trudging back to the car with my then three-year-old reclining in his stroller and the baby jutting from the front pack after hours spent herding them through the Bay Area Discovery Museum.
A day shared apparently with every other mom in Marin since parking is at a premium and we are trekking back to the other side of a large field to get our car.
As can happen after traumatic situations in my delicate state, I can’t recall exactly what led to the event but only the calamitous moment itself: I remarked how “you were in my tummy and now you’re such a big boy!” to my son.
“But how?” he replied.
“But how what honey?”
How did I get out of your tummy?
I pushed EIGHT solid pounds and seven BIG ounces from my womb and OUT, that’s how! And I FELT the pressure of EIGHT solid pounds and seven BIG ounces going through my body, pressing against vital organs, strained muscle and a helpless skeletal structure on the way OUT! I thought to myself.
But I’m responding to a preschooler, so I defer to the paper posted in the pediatrician’s office about tough questions: Be honest. Be simple. Be age appropriate.
Well, that rules out the “through the belly button” response that seems so convenient. And cute.
And then it happened. “Through a hole” I hear myself reply in an out-of-body moment, my conscious mind screaming in disbelief. What? Wait! Even I don’t understand that one!
And a hole?! You couldn’t do better than a hole? Is that what it is to you now, a hole? Not a birthing canal or even a vagina but a hole? And your impressionable little three-year-old is now going to refer to it as the hole. And his future girlfriends will blame you for this. As will his therapist.
But too late. Little rapt ears heard “Through a hole” also and I’m well, screwed.
“Where is it??”
“Where’s what? Oh look, I see a seagull!” I attempt, releasing one hand from the heavy stroller to point about in vain.
