Inevitably children will ask about how babies are made and my feeling is you can sense when your child is ready for the facts. When he or she is, it’s probably best to educate as frankly as possible. I am posting a short piece I wrote in the voice of my character, Jane Maraconi, and which was just published by Message Magazine. Fast-forward six years: baby Honoré is now seven-years-old and notices the condom machines that dot the walls of Belleville…
On the Uses of Scotch Tape
Scotch tape. Honoré, my seven-year-old, has me buying it every week, sometimes more; for him, it is the super hero of office supplies – it mends, protects, and settles scores between warring fibers and plastics. I took the ecological step of purchasing a metal dispenser so that we no longer add to the heap of plastic snails in France’s landfills. Honoré, however, continues to brandish the rolls of sticky ribbon in a joyful spirit of excess. All in the name of art, mind you. Excess fuels the creative élan, they say. Last month Honoré constructed an entire western town à la Lucky Luke, using cardboard, scissors, felt pens and tape –- four rolls of it. He regularly tapes together broken swords, puppets, pistols, and misshapen toys of all manner. When I broke a teacup he offered to tape it back together. I thanked him but told him it wouldn’t work and tossed the pieces in the garbage. Later, when I was looking elsewhere, probably in The Guardian Weekly, he retrieved the cup from the bin and taped it back together. And it held… For a sip and a half.
The creative process raises many questions and like any artist playing with his muses, my son had been reflecting a bit as he taped together his Dodge City, though not, as it transpired, about posses and poker games. If the subject of his query had any relation to cowboys it could only be in light of what they get up to in the rooms above the saloon.
In other words, the birds and the bees had been buzzing through Honoré’s mind as he taped together his OK Corral with extreme concentration. He popped The Question before dinner when I was in the kitchen manning the range, a glass of Chinon on the countertop nearby. Though he has made other attempts to understand where babies come from, this time he had whittled his questions to a sharp point and demanded a straight answer; dodging seemed cowardly, and besides, I always speak the truth in the kitchen.
I turned off the burners and headed to my arsenal, which is to say, my bookshelves, and pulled out my lumbering copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. I quickly turned to the chapter Understanding Our Bodies and found the page with anatomical drawings of the sexual organs, male and female. There was a bit too much information given, so we didn’t waste time on details such as the functions of the Bartholin’s gland. I maintained a casual tone and Honoré found both the facts and their illustrations immensely interesting — from a scientific point of view; how they related to his own body did not then and still has not really occurred to him. All in good time, I say!
For some reason, perhaps because he loves to garden with me, he has since developed a tendency to speak of human reproduction in botanical terms; rather than sperm (yes, I did use the proper words) he speaks of seeds, sometimes even of “grains.” But for elementary sex education, references to the natural world work just fine. If his point of reference is our small plot of garden in Belleville, I would not dispute it; children interpret the truth at their own height.
Honoré has been working on a new project: creating a four-foot high Japanese cherry tree out of paper towel rolls, branches, tissue paper, knick knacks from Kinder eggs, felt pens and of course, scotch tape. On our way to Office Depot to replenish our stock of tape rolls, we passed by a condom machine fastened against a wall outside a pharmacy. We’ve passed by others before and I admit to fecklessly avoiding his previous interrogations. This time, however, emboldened by our earlier foray into reproductive biology, I responded in earnest. Of course if you say “it’s a condom machine,” as I did, you will have to elaborate, and I did so as succinctly as possible. “It’s what a man puts on his penis so that when he makes love with a woman she doesn’t get pregnant,” I said. There! That should do. I hoped it would be satisfactory enough of an answer and keep him quiet until we got to the stationary store.
It didn’t, of course.
– So it’s for buying one?
– That’s right.
– What’s it called again?
– A condom.
– A what?
– A condom, I said, in sotto voce this time.
– How much does it cost?
Money! Not yet as important as Scotch tape but almost and the coins in the piggy bank are regularly spilled out, stacked and counted…
– A euro, I think. Probably a euro.
My son grew quiet, pensive. A euro is a hundred centimes and a hundred of anything is a lot in his view.
– So it’s a man who buys them?
– Yes, usually.
Best to keep it simple when in the rudimentary stages, I reasoned.
– But Mom…
– Yes, Honoré?
I looked at my son whose face had taken on a matter-of-fact expression, perhaps not unlike my own in the role of sex educator.
– But Mom…?
My boy was thinking hard.
– Yes, dear?
He was putting two and two together, I could tell. He had found the answer, the practical solution overlooked by hopelessly complicated adults.
– Why doesn’t he just use Scotch tape?