I picked the little girls up from school and they both launched into their list of homework for the day. E happily informed me she had to write a story (as always on Monday). It had to be a story about a time when she opened a box and could be fiction. It had to be three whole paragraphs which is bad but it’s ok because she did not have to use her spelling words, yea! So RJ being RJ launched into ideas for the story. E grouchily told her NO each time. So RJ launched into a rambling story about stealing a box from some evil mutant and opening it to find some weird bomb that she would have to difuse in order to save the world. Upon difusing said bomb the world would be all chocolate and rainbows and happy goodness and at last we’d all know the meaning of life.
I said ummm that sounds like an RJ story and not an E story, so I don’t think it’s a good idea. A good story, definitely but why the meaning of life, I asked? "Well duh, everyone wants to know the meaning of life, don’t you," was her reply. "I already know the meaning of life, so no I don’t need you to difuse a bomb and get some special power. But thanks".
She was surprised that I knew the meaning of life and wanted me to spill the beans. So I attempted to explain that some things you have to learn on your own – things like love and God or spirituality and the meaning of life because my answer might not be her answer. She said "Oh like in Eragon when so and so couldn’t tell so and so his real name because he had to find it himself and get power from that". Yea, she gets it!
So we talked along this vein for quite some time, pondering the books she’d read where a message like finding the answer for yourself and not accepting someone else’s answer is important. Sometimes it seemed like she was really understanding this idea and then she’d head off into a ramble about tigers and bears and morphing (she’s an Animorphs fan) and how that’s not real but she learned lessons from that. But then she’d head back into the other direction and talk some more about how to tell if you’re on the right path to finding the answers to those kinds of questions. All very interesting, especially the part when she talks about sometimes getting confused about whether something she read in a Fantasy novel was real life and real life was really a fantasy. Ha, she’s 10 after all!
The kicker of this was the final question, the one she seemed most interested in wanting an answer to… brace yourself… "Is there such thing as a living death?" huh? she wants to know about vampires or zombies? So I ask her to define living death. "When you’re alive but something happens that is so awful you feel like it is death, like you’re dead." Well. Ummm. I took a breath and said "Yes RJ, there is such a thing. Not everyone has that kind of experience in their life, but some people do feel like they have experienced a living death. And if you want to talk about it more, we can do that when you’re older." Which was fine with her because apparently living death was a cool thing because when I said it doesn’t happen to everyone she launched into Eragon again and something about dragon eggs only hatching for some people. Geez. So she thinks surving a living death means you’re special, like a dragon hatcher person? And maybe this is something to strive for? Are we sure I didn’t give birth to this particular child? Because sometimes it really seems that way.
At least it appears as though we get to put off real life discussions about emotional pain and dying a thousand deaths for awhile. Now I just have to figure out how to keep her talking about dragon eggs til she’s 20 or so… any ideas about how to do that? With this particular child? Because she’s making me nervous.
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