Читать книгу An Accidental Mother - Katherine Anne Kindred - Страница 8
ОглавлениеGOD
Today Michael asks me when he’s going to see Boomer again. Boomer was Jim’s dog who passed away last summer. I look around the room for help, but Jim is nowhere in sight. I’m on my own. I’ve come a long way since my Lutheran upbringing, and although I still don’t have it all figured out, I am certain I don’t believe in a singular Christian God or a literal heaven and hell. But Jim’s family is Catholic, and Michael sometimes attends services with his grandparents. I decide it is best to respond accordingly and save my own, more complicated theories for when he is older.
“Boomer is in heaven with God.”
“But I want to see Boomer now. How can I get to heaven?”
This is going to be a tough one. I think about the two baby ducks that died in our yard just weeks ago. A pair of adults landed in our backyard, hatched ten eggs, and swam around the pool with the babies for a week. By the end of the week most of the babies had disappeared, but we found two of them dead on the lawn. We were all in tears. I thought I recalled Jim telling the children that the babies had gone to heaven.
“We can’t go to heaven until … we … die. Boomer died, so she’s in heaven now, with the baby ducks.”
“But if I die, I’ll miss you!”
“You’re not going to die for a long time. Not until you’re old.”
“How will I get to heaven?”
Even as an ex-Lutheran, these questions are way out of my league. But Michael, at five, just needs simple explanations.
“Your spirit will go to heaven, not your body.”
“What’s my spirit?”
Michael patiently awaits my response as it takes me a while to formulate an answer. “Well, you know how you have toys that have to run on a battery, and if the battery is dead the toy won’t run?”
“Yes.”
“Well, our spirit is sort of like the energy in a battery, and our body is the battery. The energy is what helps us walk and talk and love and laugh and cry and get mad and be ourselves. When our body gets old and run-down and worn-out, like an old battery, our spirit has to live somewhere else. So it goes to heaven to live with God. Heaven is a wonderful place. And when we go to heaven someday, we’ll get to see Boomer again.”
Michael’s questions stop. He seems content with my answers, and I’m relieved. Then Jim appears, and I figure I’d better bring him up to speed. I have always done my best to respect his religious upbringing, but he knows I don’t share his traditional beliefs.
“Michael and I were talking about Boomer, our spirit, and how when we die we go to heaven to be with God.”
Jim begins to grin. “Oh, really? So you believe in God?”
Michael turns to me with his full attention. He is waiting.
“Well?” Jim asks.
I look down into the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. “Of course I believe in God!”
Michael walks away, content, all of his questions having been answered.
Jim is now laughing.
If there is a God, he must have a really good sense of humor.