How Many Christmases

My son woke me in the middle of the night. He'd had a nightmare and came to my room to ask, "How many Christmases do I have left?"

I looked at him and told him the truth: "I don't know, son. It's impossible for me to say."

This was not the answer he was expecting. He wanted certainty from his father. But I can't lie to him like that. I know these questions will come again in one form or another, and the worst thing I could do is deny my son the reality that I could leave this life at any moment.

I hugged him, kissed him, and told him it was just a nightmare and that we all needed to go back to sleep. He went to my wife, asked her the same question, and she hugged him, took him back to bed, and stayed with him until he fell asleep.

I don't believe in sugarcoating life's realities when my children ask about them. If they come to me with a question about the world, it means they've thought about it enough to ask. The least I can do is be honest and answer truthfully in a way they can understand. And sometimes the answer is "I don't know," followed by an explanation of why.

Children are resilient and should be treated as such. They hear the answer, sit with it for a bit, move on, and come back later with the same question or a related one. Back and forth it goes as they learn and cope.

That's how I am with them.