When Lillian was five she didn't believe in snow. She didn't say anything, of course, but I began to suspect my youngest daughter was an unbeliever because she talked about snow in the same way she talked about Fairies and Unicorns and Sponge Bob.
I knew I would have to be a little sneaky to find out the truth. I put her on my lap and looked right in her eyes. She looked back at me through her little bifocals.
"Lillian, are puppy dogs real?"
"Yes."
"How about elves? Are they real?"
"No."
"Fairies?"
"No."
"Goblins?"
"No."
"Cookies?"
"Yes."
"Okay, what about snow? Is snow real?"
"No."
I was right. She didn't believe in snow.
It's not hard to understand how this happened. The last time it snowed around here was about ten years before she was born. Everything Lillian knew about snow she learned from animated Christmas specials. In her mind snow was like Charlie Brown, Rudolph, and elves with little pointy shoes. Snow was just another Christmas thing we wish was true but isn't.
Small children are so busy cramming all the new things they experience into their very limited set of categories that they really don't have time to worry about clerical errors. With scores of new ideas pouring in every day, they just file them as quickly as possible. Later, when the incoming ideas have slowed to reasonable pace, there's time to organize and do a better job of sorting things out.
I think Lillian was overcome by the flood of exciting images at Christmastime and simply filed snow in her “Imaginary Christmas Stuff” drawer by mistake. It happens.
I decided to tell her the truth about snow.
I have a way of talking to my children when I'm not kidding around. I use serious body language and a certain tone of voice that they recognize. Children are very good at interpreting body language and tone. It's the first survival skill they must master.
"Snow is real," I said. "It just never snows here because it's too hot. But there are lots of places in the world where it snows every winter."
I told her about the places where kids have heavy coats and yes, even mittens. It turns out she didn't believe in mittens either. I told her about how kids make snowmen and build snow forts and how they throw snowballs at each other. And I told her about skating on frozen ponds and making snow angels. I told her everything I knew about snow.
"Yes Lillian, snow is for real. It really, really is."
While I was telling her these wonderful things, her mouth slowly opened, and she shook her head back and forth like a person saying, "No." It's as if something deep inside her still couldn't believe that such a wonderful, fairy tale thing as snow could really exist in this world where most of the good stuff turns out to be make-believe. She trusted me, but her body revealed the conflict inside, as our bodies often do.
Then she believed. She put snow into her "Real Stuff" drawer and gave herself over to joy. She squealed and ran giggling around the living room with her arms out like an airplane, tilting them as she banked left around the end of the couch.
Her oldest sister came into the room just then. She was thirteen and entering the stage where she didn't want to appear to be excited about anything.
"What's up with her?"
"Oh, she just found out that snow is real."
"You mean she thought it wasn't real?"
"Yeah, isn't that funny? She thought it was like, you know, Christmas elves and all that. But I told her it was real, and she's kinda happy about it, as you can see."
We watched her make a third circle around the couch, then tilt to the right to fly around a chair.
"And she believed you when you told her? She just believed you?"
"Sure. You know I always tell the truth about stuff like this, about what is real and what isn't in this world."
She stared at me very thoughtfully. I know she was remembering the conversation we had a few months before when she asked me if God was real. She had been wondering about God. She was wondering if she might have filed God in the wrong drawer. Maybe God belonged in the drawer with Santa. She wanted very much to believe in God, but she didn't want to be a fool.
She asked, and I answered. I looked her right in the eye and used my very serious, no-nonsense voice. I told her the truth.
No one knows for sure if God exists. Sometimes I wish we COULD know for sure, but it's one of those things that cannot be known in the same way we know that Zebras exist.
That's okay though, because whether or not God exists is not the most important question. What's really important is how you choose to live. You may choose to believe in God and live accordingly. Or you may choose to believe that there is no God. This kind of belief is a choice you make and a commitment of your life.
You will have to choose. And you will find the answers you need in the living of the life you choose.
I know she was remembering that conversation. She stared at me for a few seconds while Lillian pretended to make a snow angel on the carpet. Then she gave me a respectful nod. Do not underestimate that. Getting a respectful nod from a teenager is huge. She knows.
She knows I will always tell her the truth about stuff like this.
rlp
