Birds and Bees

August 2014

The Birds and the Bees ~ “Oma, you have to have a man and a woman to make a baby, right?”
I think, “Why me, and why now?” My ten-year-old grandson can’t ask me questions like this when we’re alone? He wants to have a sex conversation with Miss Five-Year-Old Big-Ears sitting next to him in the back seat?
I sidestep, “Well, that was true at one time, but science has changed that some.”
“How?”
“You need a sperm and an egg, but they no longer have to show up at the same time.”
“How does that work?”
Thank goodness there’s no time to answer as we’ve pulled into their driveway. I go in with the kids, and as they take off to put away their backpacks, I meet up with his mother in the kitchen.
“How much does Satchel know about sex? He’s asking questions.”
She responds, “Matt’s discussed it with him.”
I wander down the hall and ask Matt if he’s talked to Satchel.
My son looks at me in horror and says, “Eewwwww, no.” He lives to get a rise out of me.
“Oh my God.” I don’t take the bait, and with a face palm, slowly shake my bowed head and leave.
2014

Mar 2016, Nordquist Dance

Fox Trot ~ Satchel had his first ballroom dance lesson this week.
I said, “Okay, show me what you’ve got.”
Facing one another in dance position, I put my left hand on his shoulder, his right arm around my waist, and my right hand in his left at face level.
“He looks at me in shock, and as he backs away, says, “You’re my grandmother!”
“Relax, Fred, we’re not dating. We’re in my kitchen, not at the prom. It’s all good, and I know how to follow.”
October 2015

Simple as ABC ~ “What’s gay? Temple asks, sitting at my blue-tiled kitchen counter. As I’m considering how to answer that, her brother, who’s five years older than she, glances at me and takes over, “Gay is when a man loves a man and a woman loves a woman.
Temple says, “Oh, okay.”
I’m thinking how much simpler his answer was than what mine would have been.
I did add, “I do have one caveat however: there are lots of women in my life who I love, and I’m not gay.”
2015

August 2016

A Working Girl ~ A year later, at that same counter, she’s playing the soundtrack from Grease (she was in the chorus for a local play) and in “Beauty School Dropout” the word hooker comes up in the lyrics.
She asks me, “What’s a hooker.”
Not thinking this through, I answer, “A prostitute.”
“What’s a prostitute?”
Grabbing a shovel, I answer, “A whore.”
“What’s a whore?”
Digging myself into a deeper rabbit hole, I answer, “Someone who gets paid for having sex.”
“What’s sex?”
And now as we’re about six feet under, her brother steps in, faces me in alarm, holds up his hand like a traffic cop and says, “Oma, STOP RIGHT THERE. She needs to hear this with the ears of an eight-year-old.”
He takes over: “Temple, sex is like when a man and a woman neck. Like when they close their eyes and like kiss each other’s necks.”
She asks in consternation, “Do Mom and Dad do that?”
He says, “Yes.”
She screws up her face and on an in-breath says, “That’s, like, disgusting.”
He responds, “I know, and when they tell you for the first time what sex is, just pretend like you don’t know; that’s what I did.”
God, I love that boy.
2016

© 2014, 2015, 2016. Catherine Sevenau.
All rights reserved.