To Toddlers Who Misunderstand Adults

When my son is little, about 3 years old, we are sitting in a Sunday mass and in between the music and the small bowl of snacks I have for him, he’s doing well, not bothering too many people around us. 

The church gets more and more quiet as the priest begins the eucharistic blessing and when we all kneel down and bow our heads, my son begins to listen harder. I’ve done this so many times in my life, I don’t even think about what’s about to happen.

“And he took the bread, broke it and said, “Take this and eat it, for it is my body which has been given up for you.”

“Eat my body?!?” Whit looks at me in disbelief. He doesn’t seem horrified, but certainly confused. Toddlers, it seems, are used to trying to figure out the insanity of adults, and though he doesn’t know what it means exactly, he knows enough to be surprised.

I was not prepared for this. I don’t remember, as a child, ever being bothered or even surprised by the communion ceremony. I was never upset by Jesus hanging, bloody hands and feet, in every classroom. We read stories of young children put in ovens, survived and then became saints. We acted out the Easter story, Jesus arriving at the throne of Pontius Pilate a beaten and broken man, and some of us cheered, as the script called for, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Cain and Abel. Abraham walking his son into the desert, moments away from killing him. Solomon suggesting the baby be cut in half. Even Jesus one day, angry at the tax collectors, raging against them and throwing them out of the temple.

Ours was not a childhood without violence and gore.

But communion didn’t seem violent or even odd. In fact, it was the very moment we waited for. This is what made us faithful. This brought us together. This was the underscore for all the other things we were asked to believe in, the things that stretched logic: the virgin birth, the water into wine, the walking on water. All the loaves and fishes. Stories we heard every year. We could recite them the way we recited our alphabet and two-times tables.

Now, I am looking at my son, his eyes wide, waiting for an explanation. Part of me wants to laugh and another part feels shaken, as if I have suddenly seen what this looks like to the uninitiated. I gather the snacks and his book and whisk him out of the pew, but not before the priest says, “Drink this cup. This is my blood…”

“Drink my blood?!” Whit repeats loudly as we head to the back of the church.

I distract him outside. The church has a row of tulips growing, complete with dirt and rocks and bugs. He forgets about the body and blood. He’s digging with a stick in the flowerbed and though the groundskeeper might get mad at me, I don’t stop him as he digs up two bulbs in full bloom and carries them over to me, one in each hand. So proud of himself.