What Happens If My Sister Dies?

One of the things I am discovering of late is the importance of acknowledging and speaking the truth, particularly when it is uncomfortable.

When faced with a hard reality, adults so often hide the truth, soft-pedal it, pretend it isn't there, hope it will improve with time. Kids don't do that.

I have a wonderfully outspoken, inquisitive 6 year-old girl, a veritable fount of uncomfortable statements. Here are a few:

- "If my sister died, would we get another kid? I want someone to play with."

- "Is 'Debbie' (the woman I have been dating for 3 months) going to be my stepmother?"

- (laughing) "I forgot you and Mom were divorced, I thought she was still here in the house " (resumes playing)

- "Oh, man, I'm going to miss you when I go to Mom's, I wish you could come with me"

I adore the completely uninhibited openness and honesty of those phrases. There wasn't any hesitation, squeamishness, nothing. Just a question or statement. Take it or leave it, reality is what it is.

I was initially uncomfortable with those statements. She wasn't. She just put them out there and resumed whatever she was doing. Those statements may have made me uncomfortable, but they did not, in fact, kill me, because they were true, and I knew it.

When do we forget how to do that? When do we start couching everything in such carefully crafted sentences, worrying so much about how the truth will be received?

I am more guilty of that than most, I want to please people, make them happy. Like me... please? There is a place for being kind, sensitive, caring. Where that crosses over into an outright distortion of the truth, I don't know, but I cross that line more than I want to.

So here's to being more like my little girl, to seeing and saying things as they are, to not worrying (so much) what the impact of the truth is, to letting reality be what it is, because in the end, it always is anyway.