Santa’s Nursery Line-Up

A. is convinced that we found her sister at an orphanage in the South Pole, and that Santa was the headmaster or something like that. According to A., we went to the South Pole (for some undisclosed reason) and thought S. was soooooo cute, we took her home. I'm not sure where this idea of S. being found in an orphanage came from. And I'm really not sure I know where the South Pole thing comes from, either. Because Santa is from the North. Not the South. Opposite ends of the equator. She knows that.

When she (calmly) mentioned today that "we got S. from the South Pole, right? She lived with Santa before we got her", I tried thinking of some witty, sarcastic, over-her-head type of reply. Because even if she didn't understand what was so funny, I would. And that would make my day.

But the most brilliant thing I could think of as a response was, "I'm pretty sure Santa lives in the North Pole."

To which she answered in a very matter-of-fact manner, "Oh, right. It's the penguins in the South Pole".

I started to tell her that I was pretty sure penguins also lived in the North Pole. But what the hell do I know. And I didn't care that much. Because my philosophy is that sometimes, you just have to let their imaginations go. If she wants to think we picked her sister out of a nursery line-up at an orphanage run by Santa Clause in the South Pole, I'll let her think that. Because I'm grateful she's not trying to give her sister away to an orphanage here, there or anywhere (I have a vague childhood memory of once telling my own sister that I was going to call an orphanage to come get her. I may have even told her we found her in a trash can, once. But that's soooo unoriginal. If I could go back in time, I would have said that we discovered her tiny infant body in front of a time-travelling wormhole as it was closing up on the side of a hardware building, where her real parents had barely escaped back into their real time, and they simply forgot her. And since one cannot visit the same year twice, and since my parents could not leap through the rapidly closing worm hole to return the child to her parents for fear of being stuck in another time, my bleeding-heart parents scooped her up in her bassinette and took her home to live with us forever. That's what I would have said.)

So this is what A. thinks about the origins of S.. Which is just fine by me, because then I can put off the sex talk until she's 5.