My 4 year old boy comes to me with a picture in his hand. He must have found it in one of our messy drawers around the house: you know… those wonderful entropic places which reorganizing is constantly number one of your to-do list? The picture dates back to when my daughter was a newborn, her big brother (2 years-old back then) was pushing her stroller.

“Mommy who is this baby? It’s me?”

“No, sweetie, this is your sister, when she was born, see how cute she is?”

He breathes, thinkingly.

“And this little boy? It’s me?”

“No, sweetie, this is your big brother: see how little he was back then?”

He pauses, pretty pensive, then asks: “Where was I?”

“Well, you weren’t there” (duh!)

“Where was I?” (void answer deserves reiterating question)

” Well, you.. weren’t born yet”

“So, where was I? In your belly?” (this is getting complicated)

“Well no you weren’t yet in my belly either…”

“So, where was I?”

Here you go: I’m faced with the unanswerable philosophcal question of all times and I only have a fraction of a second to respond. What do I do? I’m tempted to buy some time by telling something like “that’s a very good question”… but this reminds me so much of my teacher, in primary school. When she used to say that, I use to think “ok, she doesn’t know”.

So maybe I should just be telling my son the plain truth in simple modest words and humbly admit “I don’t know”… But wouldn’t I disappoint him? Isn’t mommy supposed to know “everything”? Plus, what kind of mother am I? Not knowing where my son was? I could try to let go the guilt by clarifying that “In fact nobody really knows…”. But this would sound so much as a “it’s-not-just-me” excuse…

And if I opted for “It’s a mystery…” wouldn’t this destabilize him even more? Isn’t it too soon to give him the sense of the uncertainty of life and the precarity of our human condition?

So here I am, feeling the urge to come up with a “proper, acceptable” answer to the inexplicable. I want it to be romantic, yet rational, reassuring but somehow true (or at least not totally untrue). Eventually I come up with:

“Sweetie, you were not in my belly yet, you were still in my heart, you were in the hearts of mommy and dad”.

I hug him and give him a kiss. I must say, I’m pretty proud of my answer…

But then comes his comment: “I was in your heart?? With all the blood? HOW GROSS!”