Creative Lies

"Mom, how many times did you lie to me to protect my heart?" Wow, a question I didn't plan or expect to hear tonight.
But let's step back a moment to help you understand. Daddy is visiting with friends this evening, so it was just me and the kids for dinner. Rather than cook, I decided to eat dinner out, but we couldn't decide. After driving a short distance down the road to have the boys arguing back and forth between Taco Bell and Fazzoli's, I had had enough yelling. I stopped the van on the side of the road and after a few seconds, I asked Sofia. She kept telling us she wanted to go to Emily's. I could not for the life of me figure out what in the world she was talking about. After a few minutes, she said that Emily would make her a sandwich, a pink sandwich because that is, she said her favorite color.
So now we knew she wanted a pink sandwich made by Emily. I was lost. Finally I heard her say, she makes one for Little Bear, Momma. I know she would make one just for me. There we had it. Emily, from Little Bear was who we had to find. So I asked if Emily would make him a burger, but she said that's not what she does. She makes turkey Momma.
So, that is where my creative lie came from. I found that first of all, my boys are not equal liars (which is good to remember for when they are teenagers). I also found them eager to not hurt their sister's heart by telling her that it was impossible for Emily to make her a sandwich. And that is the tale we began to weave as I turned our direction and headed for Arby's. Suddenly, Arby's was Emily's restaurant, and she makes special sandwiches for people all over Grove City. She would be more than willing to make a turkey sandwich for our dear Sofia. The boys kept feeding the lie as we went through the drive thru, from the fact that a girl took our order and that HAD to be Emily to the fella in the drive thru window was helping her out because she had to attend to business in the kitchen. It continued as we got into the house and she began to eat her sandwich. Now, you can ask anyone in the family and they will tell you that no matter what Sofia wants to eat, she won't eat it once she has it. So this elaborate lie could have been all for naught. But not to night. That child ate every last bite of that turkey and cheese sandwich (didn't touch the fries and only drank half the juice, but she ate all of the sandwich).
Alec is the one that asked me the big question. He said, it to me and winked but later he returned to the question. He wanted to know. This Momma isn't ready to fess up about the elaborate hoax we have created for Jumbo, our elf on the shelf or Santa or even the Tooth Fairy who comes to life and takes the tooth to leave a shiny gold coin. I'm just not ready to let my biggest baby grow up. I did though fess up to the lengths I would go to protect his heart. For instance, we talked about Charley. What a special family member she was. She morphed throughout the years, starting as a bug and eventually moving into a little girl who not only went to preschool with him, but came over for lengthy playdates. Charley lived at the post office, you see. My darling son has got his Momma's creativity and he insisted every time we were out that we needed to drop off Charley off at the post office. We went as far as to open the door of the van for Charley to get out. That is just one of the creative lies I have told over the years. He's catching on though. I know eventually I will have to tell him the truth about all of them, but I love that he knew it was just stories to protect their hearts. :-)