Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 244

You guys,

My 4-year-old asks me questions that I never have answers to. One time we were reading a children’s book—The Man Between The Two Towers. At the beginning of the book there’s a picture of the Twin Towers, and then on the last page it says, “Now the Twin Towers are gone.” George asked, “Why are they gone?”  

I never lie to my kids. Except that I lie in a big way about Santa Claus. And the other day when we were ten minutes from home and George screamed, “No, it’s two minutes!” And I said, “Well, bud, it’s ten minutes,” and he screamed some more, I said, “Fine, it’s two minutes.” But we were definitely ten minutes away, and two minutes later, after I told him what he wanted to hear, the car was silent. He had fallen asleep. I should say that I don’t like to lie to my kids. But I have no idea how much truth a 4-year-old should know. I stared at the book, trying to formulate my response, and then I told my son that the towers fell down. 

“How did they fall down?” 

“A plane crashed into them.”

“Why?” 

I shouldn’t have told him about the planes. My toddler didn’t need to know about the planes. 

“It was an accident,” I lied, but I’d already said too much. I’m not sure what I said next, but I know it wasn’t good because then he asked, “What happens when you die?”

I was in too deep. I sat there in George’s bedroom, with him on my lap in the chair, and all I could think was that I’m going to get this wrong and I wish Sam were here. I don’t know what happens when you die. I don’t even know what I believe happens when you die. 

“I don’t know, bud, let’s read another book.” 

“Are you going to die?” he asked. 

“Yes but not for a long, long time,” I said. Now I thought morbidly about what would happen if I died when my kids were so little, a thought I wish I didn’t think of as often as I do. 

The hard questions are not the only questions I get wrong with my son. I don’t know how to answer the easy ones, either. One day the four of us were in the car on our way to dinner and from the backseat George asked, 

“Mama why are there so many trees?”

I looked around at the tree-lined street on both sides of the car. Why are there so many trees? Just say something! But whatever you say, don’t say, “I don’t know.” He hates that. 

“I don’t know, bud.”

Usually if I answer, “I don’t know,” George will whine. “Can you just tell me?” As if I’m keeping the answer from him. As if his mama knows all things. But she barely knows anything. Thankfully, in this instance, he let me off the hook and asked another question.

“Who planted them?” 

“Well,” I started, “A long—”

“The trees planted them,” Sam interjected from the driver's seat. “Seeds fell from the trees and then they grew on their own.”

Then under his breath Sam said to me, “Were you going to say that a long time ago someone planted the trees?”

“Yup.”

It was quiet now in the back seat, so Sam started to tell me something that happened earlier that day—he was speeding when he saw a cop. 

“What are cops?” George asked. 

“Police officers,” Sam and I said in unison. Got one.  

“Why do they call them cops?”

…Why do they call them cops? I looked at Sam. He could answer this one. 

“I honestly don’t know,” said Sam. “We should look it up.”

“Will G know?”

“I bet she will.”

“G” was referring to ChatGPT. Sam has it on his phone, or rather, I should say, “her.” When he first started asking her questions in front of all of us we didn’t have a name for her and I referred to her as, “Your girl.” 

“Ask your girl about it,” I’d say, and then later George and Layla would both say, “Papa, can you ask your girl?” At which point Sam told us to stop calling her his girl, and asked G what she would like to be called. She said, “ChatGPT,” but that’s a mouthful, so we call her G. 

My first interaction with G happened a few months ago. We decided that the kids were going to start sharing a room and were looking into constructing a custom bunk bed. I spent an hour Googling different types of wood to use but my searches yielded muddy responses. I still wasn’t sure what we should use. Sam sat down next to me at the kitchen table, pulled out his phone and asked G. As she spoke the most clear, succinct, helpful response in a matter of seconds, I felt like that time I went to The Magic Castle in Los Angeles, and I sat on stage with the magician and he placed a squishy red ball in my hand, then closed my hand into a fist, and then when I opened my hand the ball had disappeared. 

We started talking to G more, as a family. When a possum appeared in our backyard one afternoon, the kids wanted to know everything about possums. Sam said to G, “I’m here with my kids, ages 4 and 2, and they want to know about possums.”

G changed her tone and suddenly a qualified kindergarten teacher was in the room with us, talking to the kids—and us—about possums. They are nocturnal, which means they come out at night (this was the extent of what I knew). They eat nuts, berries, and insects. They crawl up trees for shelter and food, and use their tails to balance themselves. If someone approaches a possum and the possum gets scared, it might play dead. 

“What should we do if a possum is in the house?” George asked. 

“Great question!” G said. “If a possum gets in your house just stay calm and give him space. You can open a door or a window and they will crawl out on their own.”

When the kids ask a question that we don’t know the answer to, Sam will often ask G and the four of us will sit around the phone, mesmerized. But G is not always there to help us. Sometimes we have to navigate the questions ourselves. 

Back in the car, on our way to dinner, George asked, “When will we be there?”

“Eight or ten minutes,” Sam said. 

“What does eight or ten make?” 

I looked at Sam’s profile as he drove. I couldn’t understand his rationale to say “eight or ten,” as opposed to “eight or nine,” or “eight-ten.” I guess George didn’t understand either. 

“Eight or ten doesn’t make anything,” Sam said. “I was saying we’ll be there in eight minutes or ten minutes.”

“What do eight or ten make?”

If I had to guess, in hindsight, I’d say George was asking a math question. He will often ask what two numbers make. For example, what do two and five make? And we’ll say seven. Here he asked what do eight or ten make, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what he meant. 

“They don’t make anything,” Sam said. “They’re numbers.”

“What’s not a number?”

“Squares.”

Oooh, good one, Sam. I would have been stumped. George was silent for a few seconds. 

Then he said, “Trees aren’t numbers either.”

—

Until next week,

Charlie