A Conversation

We were riding in the car this morning, and Ethan seemed unusually chatty. Normally, our conversations are a little spotty because he's monitoring all of the stop lights or traffic signs.

My son talks my ear off every time in the car with all of his questions, a mom of a boy the same age said recently. And while I could completely understand where she was coming from, I simultaneously wished Ethan would be just a little more inquisitive...a little more curious.

"Where do you go to the bathroom, if you're in an airplane?" he asked out of the blue.

"Um, there's a bathroom in back of the plane," I responded. "I don't like those bathrooms. They're very small and the flusher is loud."

"Where is there a plane with a quiet flusher?" he asked. I told him I didn't know.

"Well, where does the pee and poop go?"

I thought of our Usborne book about airplanes. "Uh, it goes into a tank," I said, never one to be too technical. "Then when the plane lands a truck comes and sucks all of that out."

Ethan switched gears a little. "How do you not fall out when you're in the airplane?"

"Everybody wears a seatbelt."

"They do?"

"Yup. Just like a car."

"But what if there's a hole in the plane and you fall out?"

"They make sure the plane is closed up really tight and locked. It won't open up."

"But what if the locks break?"

He finally had me stumped.

"Don't worry about that. That's not going to happen," I told him. Never mind that flight to Hawaii a few decades ago, the one where hole opened up in the plane's roof.

Ethan fell silent, and I thought about the way some people may have conversations like this with their little ones all of the time.

This was new territory for us. I'd never been asked so many questions in one sitting.

Which made the whole two-minute exchange so very sweet.