Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Three and Talking About Marriage

I've had a couple of really funny conversations with Aaron today. The concept of marriage and being a husband/wife is SO HARD to explain!

He has been pointing out people that we know and identifying who is 'wife' and who is 'husband' correctly so I thought he got it. Well he does, but just on the surface (of course!). And then this morning, we had this conversation:

Aaron: "Mama, you're my wife."

Me: "No. I'm Papa's wife."

Aaron: "Is a wife a girl?"

Me: "Yeees.....wives are girls and husbands are boys". I think he was trying to confirm that the wife was the female of the pair.

Aaron: "I'm your husband!" It was like an 'Aha' moment for him.

Me (after laughing a long time): "No no no......Papa is my husband. He and I got married."

Aaron: "Why?"

Me: "Sometimes, when people love each other. They get married." I knew it wouldn't satisfy him but I couldn't come up with anything better. Then, we got distracted and it was the end of the conversation.

Later in the day, he says to me "Mama, I love you too. I'm your husband."

"No no no, you're my son. When you grow up, you might get married and then, you'll be somebody's husband."

He didn't seem to like the answer. Or maybe, he just couldn't comprehend it. Maybe he was wondering who he could possibly marry. I ended up trying to explain that he and I had a special relationship. I tried to throw in that people get married, and then they get babies and have these new special bonds with the babies. All the simplification and trying to avoid further traps into explanations of other things got me confused in the end!

3 comments:

Jean-Luc Picard said...

Marriage must be a tricky thing to explain when Aaron isn't sure about roles.

Mike said...

"The concept of marriage"

Maybe you could explain that to me someday.

Bilbo said...

Thank goodness you don't live here in the enlightened US and have to explain the concept of gay marriages. Even I don't understand that one.