Inadequacies

In the car, I'm a captive audience. The girls know they can talk to me and I can't run away.

So today, Imogen was in hypochondriac mode trying to describe (at length) something that was hurting her. "It's not my lungs, it more like... by my heart... right here, but it's not my heart. It's my soul. Yeah, my soul hurts."

"What?" I said.

"My soul hurts," she repeated. "Right here."

I glanced in the rear view mirror to get an idea of where one's soul is located. I didn't know what to say. I can't tell her that the soul isn't real, nor can I tell her exactly what or where it is.

"Your soul is like... your spirit. It makes you alive..." I said. Or is it a heart that pumps blood and a brain firing off it's neurons or neutrons or whatever that makes you alive? An insect is alive. Does an insect have a soul? I continued to stumble through an explanation but thankfully she got distracted and I dropped it quickly, not wanting to have this conversation. How do you quantify the unquantifiable to a child who wants to quantify everything.

Recently Imogen asked how I knew something (that dentists turn into fire breathing dragons when you aren't in the room... but that's another story) and I told her I read it in the big instruction book that they give you when you have a baby.

"Some people don't have children," she pointed out.

"That's true," I said.

"So they don't know about that?" she asked.

"That's right," I said.

I wish I really did have an instruction book.