On the way to camp one
morning, we were talking about books. I
had given Suzie The Light Princess by George MacDonald and told her that he also wrote one
of my favorite books when I was her age, At The Back of the North Wind and
how it ends up being sad but not sad.
Suzie asked for further explanation.
“Do you remember what a metaphor is,
Suzannah? It’s when one thing stands for
something else. The boy in the story,
Diamond, is happy, but they are poor, and he has a hard life, just like the
North Wind blows hard and cold in the winter.
When Diamond visits the country at the back of the North Wind, it is
warm and beautiful and nice. He has enough to eat. At the end
of the book, he goes there to stay: the metaphor is that he has gone to
heaven. It's odd for the main character
a children's book to die, but even though it's sad, you’re also kind of happy
for Diamond.
And then Alan led us off on a
philosophical trajectory.
Alan: What's heaven?
Me: A lot of people believe you go to heaven
after you die. It’s a beautiful place,
and everyone is happy. I personally do
not believe in heaven, but a lot of people do.”
Suzannah: I believe in
heaven.
Alan: I don’t believe in heaven.
I believe in . . . Devon. Devon is
a place where monsters live. (He happily
informed us) I am a monster. When you
and Suzie die, you will go to heaven, but (with no small amount of satisfaction) I will go to
Devon.
Our next profound conversation took
place while Suzie was off at the big camp 4th grade sleepover. Not wanting Alan, a rising first-grader, to
feel he was missing anything, we let him choose a special restaurant for
dinner. His preference? Dairy Queen.
While we ordered, he flipped through their cake book (yes, we have to
look at EVERY cake.)
His little fingers paused at a cake showing
the Grim Reaper standing by an open grave.
It was embossed with large black letters R.I.P (I don’t know about you, but I
wonder what might be the occasion for such a cake.)
Alan:
What’s R.I.P.?
Yeah, you try to explain that to a five-year-old.
I will say that I am often amazed at the
amount of trivia Steve and I have amassed between us. I explained what R.I.P meant and why it’s on
tombstones. Alan was also interested in
the figure in the black robe.
Steve told him that the Grim Reaper
originated in the Middle Ages (no, I’m sure Alan has no idea what the Middle
Ages are. Thank goodness he didn’t ask.)
during the Bubonic Plague which was a sickness that made a lot of people die back then. (Since his other grandfather died, it has
been well established that Papa and I are NEVER going to die.) We talked about how back then a farmer used a
scythe to reap, that is cut down, grain, so the Grim Reaper uses a scythe to reap souls when people
die. Yeah, you
try explaining what and where a soul is to a five-year-old. That was the first thing he wanted to
know. Next question?
Yes, after the Grim Reaper comes, people can
still turn into zombies. (What the heck,
follow the logic, and you'll come to that conclusion, too.) Alan has an abiding interest in zombies and is
well informed about them. He told us
that zombies do NOT east people’s
brains. No, they punch you in the nose. That
is what zombies do, in case you didn’t know.
Steve talked about how the Asian rats carried the fleas
that carried the plague bacteria came with goods along the Silk Route. By the time he explained what the Silk Route as and I added the information that the
plague died out partly because the Asian rats were overrun by the big Norwegian
rats, on which the fleas didn’t thrive, well by then, we were talking to each other. Alan was pretty much enthralled contemplating
zombies, as you do while eating your ice cream at DQ. While he was deep in
thought, a lovely lady stopped by the table and said, “What a good little boy
you are, sitting here eating your dinner.
You were so quiet, we hardly knew you were here.”
Thank you, Grim Reaper and your
zombies.
I was pretty sure, however, that this topic would come back after lights out to bite me. Sure enough, at 8:30, a little voice called
from the top of the stairs, “Nana, I want to talk about something. It’s about the Gwim Weaper.”
In the end, he decided the Grim Reaper was
not a monster. (Alas, I thought, when he
dies, he will not go to Devon.) He is
really just a boy in a Halloween costume. Alan saw a Halloween costume once that was a
scary ghost with bones all over its face that really frightened him. The Grim Reaper is the like that.
Next came the what-else-can-I-milk-this-for
portion of the evening. “Nana, will you
sing me another song?”
Of course I will. Of course I’ll sing my Perfect Grandson another song. How
about arousing lullaby of “Nobody loves me/Everybody hates me/I’m gonna eat
some worms”?
I left him to giggle himself to sleep.
