Breaking shells

“Do you have sex with Mommy,” my 11-year old daughter asked me out of the blue with a matter-of-fact expression, popping her head from her kanji practice books.

Caught off guard, I was struck speechless. When I finally regained my wits, all I could mutter was, “What do you mean by ‘sex’?”

She smirked mischievously but innocently, “Do you sometimes do something strange with Mom under the futon?”

I was even less prepared for the graphic illustration, and must have been so upset I flashed a signal that my children have come to recognize as a prelude to a sermon. But before falling over the edge, I managed to throw back the question, trying not to betray my unease, “Where did you see that?”

“On TV,” my 10-year old son butted in, followed by a giggle.

On regular days, my children come straight to my office after school for tutorial lessons I arranged with a Japanese juku teacher. Then my wife or their teacher drives them home, which is only five minutes away by car. We have an agreement that once home, they would continue their assignment. After that, they may watch TV programs that I have previewed and approved.

Like most parents raising children in Japan, we train our children to be independent at an early age. Elementary school children are trained to walk to and return home from school alone or in groups by themselves. Since they were 8, my children already know how to prepare their own food from culinary lessons at school and on TV.

Like many households in which both parents work in these pinching times, my children usually have two to four hours of unsupervised time on regular days.

My daughter’s question jolted me into self-examination. As a parent, have I really been “here” for them, even when I am with them? Have I given them free time at too early an age? Have I assumed too confidently that they would always cling to their childlike purity, never seek the world beyond parental restrictions, nor probe the outer limits of their freedom?

It is obvious that despite our best efforts, we cannot really guard our children from things we don’t want them to see yet—what with easy access to such images on TV and internet. Even without these influences—as in our more primitive times—every child is bound, one day, to ask the question of their physical origin.

As these questions played in my mind, I regained my sense of balance. Too focused on my own discomfort, I almost failed to seize the beauty of the moment. How many fathers ever get to hear this question openly asked of them by a child in the delicate transition to puberty? Indeed, that I got to hear this question is the sign that I am “here,” that I seized the very fragile moment when my child breaks the shell of innocence and henceforth moves on irretrievably through the throes of adolescence.

I don’t know if I managed the conversation right after I recovered from the initial fluster. All I could remember is that I told her that “sex” is how Dad and Mom made a beautiful baby who is now growing up to be a lovely, artistic girl. Sex is what two grown-ups do when they are in love and are ready to have a family by getting married. My three children listened to my answers with unabashed interest—and followed up with questions mostly on babies, and how they were as babies.

Only time will tell if they have absorbed my answers. There will be more shells to break as children grow. They will certainly hear of sex being spoken of by peers in less pretentiously puritan tone than I their bumbling father could manage. At the end of the day, I was thankful that I didn’t intimidate them enough to discourage them from asking more questions. I realize that children break shells by the questions they ask, and adults by the answers they give to such questions.