Isaac is an atheist. Religion just offends his scientific mind. Church is merely an ordeal of pew-sitting and enforced quiet, with the lone benefit of baked goodies at the end. Also, since he spent the first several years of his life attended Quaker Meeting, and then a couple years of nothing, and now is being bodily dragged to Episcopal services, I suppose our spiritual journey has confused him a bit.
He points out, quite logically, that if God existed, then someone would’ve seen Him, up there on a cloud. He says, “Listen, people fly all the time. Think of all the planes criss-crossing the sky! And yet no one has ever seen him!”
However, he does still believe in Santa. Not only like a normal child, but that Santa has these extreme supernatural powers. He never wants Santa to just bring him something you could buy at Toys R Us or Target. He wants Santa to blow his mind. He wants Santa to, for instance, get him the powers of Aquaman and a room-sized tank to swim in. That was last year. This year he wants something like a greenhouse, where he can grow things and do his experiments. Also he wants an iPad2 and an iPhone, neither of which Santa can afford! Dear Lord the kid is 9!
I said that I too would like a sort of studio cottage. It would have a place for me to write and to do artwork, play flute, and knit and keep my spinning wheel and fiber projects and you know, maybe grow some orchids or something special there too. I explained this to Isaac while we drove.
Isaac: Well, you should ask! Maybe he’d bring you one.
Elias: No, Santa doesn’t bring toys to grown-ups, only to the children.
Isaac: But how do you know? No one has ever tried it!
True. I think I will ask. It couldn’t hurt, right?
Meanwhile, Elias in his sweet pure 5-year-old innocence, told me the other day: “I believe in Jesus, God and Santa: all the persons!” He’s been going to church with us and to Sunday school afterwards, where he’s absorbing Christianity like a sponge. When his little friend at school was home with the flu, Elias suddenly insisted to me, “Pray to God!! Pray! Pray!” and stone cold forced me to pray right then and there. You may not know that I’m not a big pray-er, so this felt very strange. Also the kid was only mildly ill and it seemed a little overwrought.
But I’m trying to be a team-player on the church thing in the interest of domestic harmony. Ben and I have a sort of truce on our various lifestyle choices: I have to attend church; he has to recycle and eat organic locally-sourced foods. These are just some of the compromises that come along with a lifelong marriage, I guess, and pretty manageable as these things go.
So. We have to get these kids to write their Santa letters and finalize their choices. Little do they know that Santa is already planning to get them each the Devil’s own Nintendo DS.
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