Of Birds and Bees
Elle choked, sputtering orange juice across the kitchen table. "What?"
Her precocious six year old just blinked and repeated himself. "How did the baby get into your tummy?"
Elle looked at Gabriel, silently asking for assistance, but her husband was trying too hard not to laugh. "Well," Elle said, pulling Noah into her lap and arranging him around her swelling stomach, "When a man loves a woman very, very much, they have a way of showing that the love each other. And... that makes a baby."
"But how did it get into your tummy?" Noah rubbed Elle's stomach gently.
"Magic," Elle said simply, sliding Noah off her lap and returning to her cereal.
"Elle!" Gabriel looked shocked. "Do you want him to go to school tomorrow and tell everyone that his mommy has a baby because of magic?"
Elle narrowed her eyes, "Well I didn't see you offering another explanation."
"Fine. C'mere, Buddy, and I'll tell you about babies." Obligingly, Noah clamored into his father's lap. "You remember the bird's nest in the back yard?"
Elle couldn't help it--she burst out laughing. "The birds and bees? You're actually giving him the birds and bees?" It was too much.
"Hey, my mother gave me the birds and bees when I was about his age, and look how I turned out!" Elle started to say that she didn't want her son to become a psychotic serial killer who hacked off people's skulls to play in their brains, but she didn't think that breakfast was the right place to bring that up, so she just raised one eyebrow. Gabriel just smiled. "You know what I mean."
Elle nodded, "go ahead. I can't wait to hear this."
"Okay, so the birds had little eggs, right? Well those eggs are baby birds. Your mommy's stomach is like an egg..." Elle cleared her throat in warning. Gabriel back-tracked, "but of course she is much more beautiful than those eggs were, isn't she?" Noah nodded, Elle smiled and Gabriel sighed--crisis averted. "See, the baby is growing in her stomach, and until it's big enough to come out, that's where it's going to stay."
"But..." Noah still looked a little confused. "How did it get in there?"
Elle swallowed, "Daddy and I... we loved each other so much that the love just... um... spilled over! And the baby started growing." Gabriel snickered and Elle shot him a look.
Noah's little brow was furrowed as he tried to compile all the information his parents had given him. "Oh," he said at last. "Tommy Dawson told me that babies came from penises, but I guess he was wrong." Shrugging, Noah hopped off Gabriel's lap and left his parents sitting at the table in shocked silence.