One of the things I was expecting having kids was being able to field their difficult questions and now, it seems, that little Verity is at that age where the most innocuous probing can put you into a tricky position.
“Why has that man got a different coloured face?”
“Why has Ceri from CBeebies only got one arm?”
“Where is your daddy, Dad?”
The first two I was prepared for and one elucidates about the differences there are between all of us but at our core of humanity we are all the same. I could go on and blow her mind about every living creature on earth being related and every single man-jack of us sharing a common ancestor from the trees to the tapeworm to the blue whale, but I held back on that little doozie.
The last question, I skirted around. I dodged it. Quick answer, keep it brief, keep it short, keep it closed, so there’s no room for any further questioning.
“I don’t know, darling,” I reply, “He left a long time ago, when I was little.”
I was expecting more questions but she looked at me with an understanding look and repeated what I’d said about him leaving a long time ago. She asked again the following day and I repeated my answer. I suspect that I will be probed further and I’ll have to give more details for Verity likes to know the truth. It would be much easier to just lie, no? I could say he fell under the drum of a steamroller or he ran away to join a troupe of Romanian tumblers with the circus, but if I did that Verity would only ask more questions and dig deeper and the truth about lying is that to tell a lie, you often have to tell another and another.
Of course, there might one or two readers out there who stumble across this entry and want to throw their coffee cup at the screen. I am just reporting my life and what happens. This is not passing judgement on anyone, this is real life. What’s passed has passed. But, for every action we make there are consequences, every thing we do has ongoing repercussions down the line.
The trick is to tread gently…