"Gila, how come grown up La-Las have hair on them?"
That's how it started, y'see.
Thinking I was in for another lovely evening of cuddling with David's girls while he upped his batting average and won another softball game, then remembering the moment Emily climbed up on my lap that while they're always lovely evenings... They just get weirder and weirder.
Today we learned Greek mythology, I'd bought them a children's version of the Trojan Horse story in Waterloo and by the time David was out the door we were arguing over why the Spartans wore Purple and why they were fighting the Trojans for their queen and why did some guy named after a city in France steal their queen in the first place...
Here I was thinking I'd gotten off scott free not having to explain why there was a golden apple in the first place, when Emily looks up with that "I'm about to ask a difficult question look" and proceeds to grill me about puberty.
We covered eggs, fertilization, why pubic hair helps keep "La-Las" and "Ding-Dings" from infection just like eyebrows keep things from falling into your eyes, why you need boys to make babies.
We did not cover intercourse, fortunately, and to my susprise when I grilled David about it he said "whenever they ask me about babies I just say that when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much they make a baby and they leave it at that" and I'm left all confused.
I was on the verge of drawing pictures of ovaries the way my mom did when I was five.
By some miracle of five-year-old vocabulary, I got let off easy after fertilization, and Olivia just wanted to know when she'd have eggs too. I said "when you're about twelve years old, I guess" and she wanted to know what year that would be, and "2006" seemed to satisfy her enough for us to move on to arithmetic.
"What year will I be a hundred years old in?"
So we counted to 2094.
Emily threw her favourite tantrum when she felt left out and threatened to run away to London and live with the poor people. I asked her not to go because we'd miss her and she seemed surprised...
When I pointed out that there'd be no one in London to give her birthday presents she announced "I'll be with the poor people" and I had to shiver.
She decided, though, that a hug and a piggyback ride to bed would be ample reward for not running away.
I can't get over that I just explained puberty to two little girls.
Kinda feels like I was practicing for doing it again one day, but every time I think that I have to kick myself.
Still, it was only a conversation, and unfortunately one with the potential to get me in trouble with the girls' mom, but...
Somehow, the fact that it's that part of night when I'm usually hiding from consciousness, the fact that I'm stone sober but just as detatched as on the occasional bus stop reverie... Somehow I'm just the tiniest bit freaked.
"Gila, why do grown up La-Las have hair?"