Having “the talk”

I always thought that “the talk” with Lukas would be the talk about his life, his past, his labels. Everything about Lukas in the last three years revolved around autism and the issues surrounding who he is and where he came from. It never occurred to me that he would rather know where he came from in a biological sense before he would want to know the life struggle he faced. J

Lukas has always known the names of reproductive organs. I thought I was pretty much in the clear because he could read and had read many anatomy type books for children. He also likes the Microsoft Encyclopedias on disc which have movies on subjects. Once, when Lukas was in Kindergarten, a librarian asked him when he was born. He looked at her and said, “nine months from the time sperm traveled up my mother’s fallopian tubes and fertilized the ovum and traveled down and implanted itself into her uterus (which he always pronounced U-Tear-US).” While this certainly demonstrated a need for our team to address how to answer questions simply without detail and what it and isn’t appropriate to bring up with a stranger, I just assumed that having a talk about the Birds and Bees was unnecessary.

Two weeks into the second grade, Lukas showed me a gap in his knowledge. It was 7am and breakfast time. Lukas sat eating his cereal while

I snuck some cold leftover chicken. Lukas looked at me and squinted his eyes.

‘mom?”

“yeah?”

“if you eat that chicken, it has protein right?”

“yeah?”

“well, sperm is a protein right?”

“huh?”

“well, If you eat that chicken, it will give you protein which can turn into a sperm, and then you can get pregnant by eating

healthy chicken.”

“huh? No Lukas. It doesn’t work that way.”

“But chicken has protein right?”

“yeah but sperm doesn’t come from protein in chicken meat. It comes from men.”

“men?”

“you need a man and a woman to make a baby.”

“but how does the sperm get into the woman?”

“the man gives it to her.”

“BUT HOW DOES HE DO IT? How EXACTLY does the sperm get into her?”

At this point, I realize what he wants. To be very honest…. I couldn’t tell if Lukas was just trying to get me to talk about sex or if he just didn’t know.

I then manage to do something I always thought I would never do:

“Just go ask your father.”

2002 Antonia Christopher