MY youngest had us in fits of laughter again this week, when he started talking about “the Belgian Mary”.
We had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained that he’d been learning about the Belgian Mary at school, when the vicar came to talk to his class.
It wasn’t until he said: “You know, Jesus and the Belgian Mary” that it clicked, and we all fell around laughing.
His sisters and I told him that it was the Virgin Mary, but he carried on insisting that Jesus’ mother was the Belgian Mary (I worry about his hearing sometimes) and that it was the rest of us who’d got it wrong. He’s only six (bless!)
From now on, in our house at least, the mother of Jesus will, I’m afraid, always be known as the Belgian Mary.
And his sisters were quite happy to leave him with this much funnier misapprehension.
But I felt it was my duty to put him straight.
In my efforts to convince him that she really was the Virgin Mary, and not from Belgium at all , I found myself trying to explain both the Virgin birth and what a virgin is.
I’ve always tried to be completely open on the subject of sex, and had a policy of “blind them with science” when my older two daughteres asked me anything biological.
This approach seemed to work better with his big sisters though. Maybe it was because there were two of them, with just a two year age gap. From about the age of five they were constantly bombarding me with questions on the subject.
We had an illustrated children’s book called “The Body”, which they found hysterically funny and fascinating in equal measure. This was their main reference book for three or four years and they rapidly had enough information to choose it as their specialist subject should they ever get on to Mastermind.
In contrast, my little boy seems totally disinterested. And because he’s never asked any questions, I now realise he is blissfully ignorant on the subject. Which is either really good or really bad. I’ve not made my mind up yet.
So to explain what a virgin was, I had to tell him what sex was. I expected a stream of questions, or giggles. But he just listened in a disinterested sort of way.
I don’t think I did a very good job though. Because when I finished he asked: “Does that mean you’re a virgin mummy?”
As good as, I told him.