Poor Ben. Until yesterday, he thought he had three sets of grandparents. Leave it to Mom-the-killjoy to dispel all fantasy worlds. We were at my in-laws' house, speaking about how old a coin was, and Ben--ever the mathematician--said, "In sixteen years, my Grandpa is going to be 100!"
"That's right, Ben!"
"Not this Grandpa, my other grandpa."
"Er, you mean PopPop?" I asked.
"No, I mean my Grandpa in Massachusetts." My in-laws have a summer house in Massachusetts, and we spend long weekends there with them when school is out. Clearly, Ben didn't quite make this connection--different house, same grandparents. I tried to figure out how to break it to him gently.
"Um, Ben? That's the same Grandpa that's sitting in the dining room right now."
(pause, eyes moving, brows furrowing, wheels turning...)
"You mean..." I braced for tears and confusion.
"...you mean they own TWO houses???"
OK, so maybe 'poor Ben' isn't really accurate. He had split his grandfather into two people in his mind--the summer, Massachusetts Grandpa who made pancakes, and the rest-of-the-year Grandpa in New York who doles out silver dollars for the found pieces of Afikomen at Passover Seders.
Once I realized that his six-year-old brain had no trouble assimilating this new information (indeed, the next words out of his mouth were, "I want to own two houses!"), I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then I steered him back to the money talk, figuring he'd need it if he wanted to own two houses one day.
No comments:
Post a Comment