The age of innocence

My oldest son is interested in politics.
Really.
I mean, for being 10, he has a lot of questions, is very curious about the upcoming elections and the candidates, and knows some good political jokes.
Now, we, as parents, have agreed to do everything in our power to protect the purity of our young children.
We do not let our kids watch a lot of the movies and t.v. shows other kids are watching, and if we do, we watch right along with them so we can monitor what they are taking in.
God's mandate to parents is to "train up a child in the way he should go," and for us, that translates in part into not letting our children watch just anything.
Train in that command is the action verb and thus requires the parents active participation in said training.
We feel that subjecting our children to hours of passive watching of movies and t.v., especially movies and t.v. shows that are generated by, endorse and saturate our children with world views and sets of values that are diametrically opposed to our own, and not just ours, but those of the Bible, at such young ages, before their own belief systems are firmly in place and before they have an ample filter with which to process the information coming at them, is downright harmful to them and is irresponsible parenting on our part. (Whew! That was a long sentence! Can you say run-on?)
Anyway, one day a few weeks ago, as we were riding around town, Isaac asked about all the political signs for local elections decorating various front yards.
"Who are these people? And who do you know who to vote for?" he asked.
These are questions I hardly have a handle on myself, as an adult, and now my 10 year old wants to discuss politics with me!
I do know that I had been recently upset about some political stances people I thought should know better had taken.
I did my best to explain that it was important to know who these people were, and that I would be researching it for myself in the near future as I am a voter who cares about issues and does not do enie-menie-miney-moe on my ballots.
I told him it was critical to choose the man, or woman, who would do the best job, and also uphold the truth and have values (hard to find in these days of no absolutes).
Had I been thinking and not just spouting, I would have just let it go at that.
I then allowed my emotions to take over, and launched into . . . well a tirade of sorts, I suppose.
A tangent, if you will.
A rant.
I have my faults, too. Lots of them.
Soapboxes is one of them, as you can probably tell from the earlier portion of this post.
I can admit that, and I am working on not having them, but sometimes . . . well, change is hard.
(It's helpful when you can see yourself, isn't it. Painful. But helpful.)
So I let my poor, captive audience 10 year old son have it.
A soapbox!
"And don't let anyone tell you you can't legislate morality! Jesus did it! People will try to tell you that in politics, morality is not an issue, but it is. Some things are never right. Abortion is never right, regardless of economic policy. There are some issues, Isaac, that you can not sweep under the rug!"
He was quiet for a moment, and then . . . "Well, with abortion, it depends . . . " he trailed off.
Oh my gosh! What was he saying? My mind immediately ran to all the things he could mean by that statement.
Was he talking about victims of rape?
Single moms who feel like there is no alternative?
Women who are forced to abort?
Where was he getting this from?
"What makes you say that?" I asked.
"Sometimes, when you are in the middle of a mission, and you are loosing men and there is nothing you can do to win the situation, and you know it, you have to abort. Otherwise, all your men will die for no reason."
It took me a minute to take in what he was saying, to make sense of it all in the context of what we had been talking about.
I was taken aback.
He was talking about abortion in terms of aborting a military mission or operation.
He had no idea that was not what I was referring to.
"Why did you say it was never right?" he asked.
For a split second I considered telling him about the process of ending the tiny hope of a life; of telling him that there are some women out there who are too scared or scarred or alone, to have their babies, and chose the alternative, and that some don't even have that choice and are forced to chose death.
I considered telling him that just as he lived in my belly, growing safe and sound, loved from the moment he was known about and waited for anxiously, some babies are ripped from their mother's wombs, unwanted.
I did not tell him.
At that moment, I saw the innocence in him. The purity.
I struggled.
He knows the world is a hard place.
He has looked death in the face twice within one year.
He heard the news story about the father who shot his three young children and then himself.
He watched with my cousin and I as the World Trade Center fell into dust in front of our eyes on the morning news.
"New Yok is fallin down, Patti!" he told her.
He is not a baby.
But, this?
I could not bring myself to share this new horror of the world with him just yet.
There is so much time for him to know these things. To know all the sadnesses and sorrows of this earth.
This age of innocence is so short.
I had even taken for granted that he would know what I was talking about.
And there will be a day, sooner than later, most likely, that he will know these things.
But not yet . . . not yet.