MamaStories

Do you think about the future? Do you wonder what it will be like? Or do you live like it’s always going to be the way it has been?

~

I found at least 5 entries like this one, all in drafts, abandoned. As I prepare for the growing season with more resolve and urgency than ever before now that my apprenticeship is over (ha!), I need to line up my motivations like a general does her troops. This is just a declaration, not a proof or demonstration: others are supplying the data much more clearly and comprehensively than I ever could.

~

1. We’ve got problems

I believe that sometime in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my daughter, life will be changed, drastically. This is because three changes are already happening.

• Peak Oil

(I believe that) there will be a chronic shortage in oil production and thus cheap oil. This year, in 20 years, I don’t know, but in my lifetime. This will not just affect the heating of our houses and our trips to the grocery store, but also the delivery trucks’ trips to the grocery store, and the farm equipment that “grows” our produce, and the factory equipment that put together all those plastic containers for our shampoos, and the pharmaceuticals producing our medicine, etc. (cf. The Oil Drum)

• Economic Depression

(I believe that) increasing debt, decreasing value of money, hyperinflation, the precariousness of globalization and the lie of never-ending growth will soon mean the end of any value to our national currency, the end of imports, the closing of  businesses and banks, rampant unemployment, the end of the middle class as we know it, and the cessation of public services. (cf. The Crash Course)

• Climate Change and Overpopulation

(I believe that) the Earth is changing and that it’s too late to do anything about it (if we ever could), that several tipping points have been already been (b)reached. The effect is the disturbance of the climate pattern upon which our agriculture and settlements developed and rely, and thus a growing difficulty for growing food and maintaining our towns and cities. This means a growing number of climate refugees and massive immigrations of our immense world population.

All three are interrelated. I suspect Economic Depression will be the first step, soon exacerbated by Peak Oil, then, more gradually but much more insistently, Climate Change. (Read also, John Michael Greer’s “Endgame” and Richard Heinberg’s Museletter).

~

2.  Collapse

I believe that even just one and certainly all of these events together will lead to collapse. I don’t believe it will be as bad as zombies or The Road, but I foresee some hard times and, at the very least, the end of the way we live our lives today.

I can’t say that it is my hope that this won’t happen. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if it didn’t. If, for instance, we found some renewable, clean and omnipresent source of energy, freely and democratically available,  capable of powering our fleet of vehicles and our agricultural and factory equipment. Oh, and if it could also reverse the climate change tipping points… Sounds like heaven on earth to me, but I’ll just go ahead and prepare for if that doesn’t happen.

And it’s not like we have a lot of time. Collapse is already happening. Maybe not to me, or you, but to many in this country, in the world, and to whole countries even, to some degree or another. But for reasons that will become clear, here I just want to talk about myself, my family, and my neighborhood.

~

3. Hope

Still, I have hope. I hope that (for myself and my community, at least), collapse will be gradual enough. I hope it’s not a precipice, but a staircase, and that at each step enough people will (have to) take sufficient action to “catch up” on the decline. I hope that we can descend gracefully: without famine, violence, the destruction of culture and civilization…

A funny thing, though, this hope. I hope it’s reasonable (unlike “aw, come on, nothing’s going to happen!”). It will require hard work and sacrifices,  but we could pull it off. And to those who say “forget it, it’s too late, TS is really going to HTF,” I say “I hear you,  but you know what? I have no choice but to hope. My child leaves me no choice.” I must do my best to make my hope, her hope come true.

~

4. Starting descent

How do I do this? We, myself and my immediate family, have already started to power down. For instance, this month, February 2010, is our 16th month of the Riot for Austerity. In the Riot we try to decrease our consumption of oil, water, electricity, and consumer goods, and our production of waste, all to10% of the US national average. It’s tough! We’re almost there with certain things, but not anywhere near 10% with others.

We changed our eating habits: less meat, less food, more bulk, dry goods, and very little eating out. We are establishing a large food garden, with a hoop house for a winter harvest, and hopefully a beehive soon, and chickens. We work on our food storage and emergency supplies. The immediate goal is to grow and store enough and a healthy variety of food to feed two families, and to plant an extra row for the hungry. You can find more details of our lifestyle changes on the “What We Do” page.

Why are we doing this, making these sacrifices in the time and the land that is still plenty? Do I  think it’s going to make a difference to climate change? I’m not that naive.

• But I do it out of principle: to take more than what one needs is to be greedy and bad for the soul.
• I do it because, when I make something myself, with my own time and genius and effort, I take responsibility for it and I take care of it as a thing that I love. When I buy it, I just get the responsibility, like an extra price tag, easily snipped off. I “take care” of it only because it cost me so much - or, more frequently, I don’t take care of it at all, because it cost me so very little. I want to take control, responsibility, and care.
• I want to be prepared - practically and psychologically - for a future with less cheap oil, less income, less security, more manual labor, the need for different kinds of skills, etc.
• I do it to set up a model for others, for when circumstances will force them, too, to adopt such a lifestyle. That’s my next point.

~

5. A model

We take these and many other actions as an average (middle class) family, with an average income and debt. We can’t bring in the big machines to flatten the land and mow down all the trees that shade our vegetable garden. We can’t tear down our 1950’s ranch and put a zero energy house in its place. We can’t buy the $1000 compost toilet, the photovoltaics, the hybrid car. And that’s good, because that makes our place an attainable model for anyone in our quite average situation around here.

As people start realizing they can no longer afford the $300 electricity bill, the $4000 oil bill, or the cable subscription, we can show them that it’s possible both practically and psychologically, for them to descend without hurting and actually even gaining something. For we don’t need television and video games to entertain ourselves, and digging in the garden is better exercise than the gym, and eating from that garden is healthier than take-out. I hope to demonstrate by example that living with a little less at a time does not need to hurt.

~

6. Will that be all?

Do I think that what we are doing and working on - this 90% reduction in consumption of this and that, this 50% (?) self-reliance in food, this reskilling, etc. - will be all that is required of us?

Not by a long shot! But as a first step it’s the perfect preparation for the second step.

Which is? I don’t know. Ask me on a good day, then ask me again on a bad day. All I know is that what my family and I are doing right now is not what will be required, at some point, of all of us, and that after that, there will be even more.

Think of it. When oil hits $5, or $10, or $50 a gallon? When the shelves in the grocery store stay empty? When we are freezing in our houses? When half the people on the street are unemployed, and one third is homeless to boot? When a shift in climate wipes out a major crop? When the majority of us can no longer ignore or evade the situation, because our money can’t buy anything? Now we’re talking collapse.

There are times when I think the worst and that head-for-the-hills feeling flares up. When, in essence, I lose hope. But I squash it. Many reasons make it impossible for my family to pack up and dig in. It wouldn’t work for me to want to live as if collapse has already happened. It would wreck my family and isolate me. That’s not what I’m aiming for.

So if in the eyes of some I take it too fast, and in the eyes of others I take it too slow, so be it. I hope I’m hitting that golden mean, but I also know that mean is sliding down as we speak, until at some point “too much” and “too little” collapse into one.

In the meantime I hope the forerunners can be helpful, by their example, to the masses descending behind them. But if there’s suddenly going to be a whole lot of people barreling down that ever steeper and narrower staircase, it would be good for those who are ahead to install a railing as they go. Or else we’re all going to end up in a big, crushed heap at the bottom.

~

That railing is relocalization, but about that, next time. It takes a lot out of me to write this, and it takes a long time to write, because I know that most of you don’t agree, and I feel I have to be argumentative, on the defensive, and watch my words. While I just want to say it like it is for me, so we know where I stand.

Here is our list so far - click for larger but not necessarily for more legible.

We just got a batch of Roald Dahl in, and more Cynthia Rylant books. Amie also loves Lauren Child’s books, for the stories (e.g., Charlie and Lola) as well as the illustrations. So I was excited to see she has illustrated Pippi Longstockin, but once I leafed through the book I doubted Amie would be charmed. Can anyone recommend a well-illustrated Pippi for me?

…

And in other news Amie caught the flu - probably H1N1 because it is the only flu in town at the moment. She was doing so well since we started her on daily raw milk, elderberry syrup, and an elevated dose (800 IU) of vitamin D. She came off the puffer (asthma medication) almost immediately - the month before we started, she needed 2 puffs every night. When she caught a cold 2 weeks ago, she had only the runny nose and some coughing, and no wheezing, so no puffer - a first!

Still, yesterday the first symptoms started and now she has a mild fever, a sometimes persistent cough, and mild trouble breathing. She’s mostly sleeping, but when she’s not, we’re reading books.

And in the meantime we’re 20 November and it’s 65F out.

“That is the Mama skeleton, and that is the Baba skeleton, and that is the big sister and the baby brother skeleton, and…”

Yesterday evening I was helping Amie get to sleep - I just lie next to her in the dimmed light, in our bed (we still cosleep), hold her hand, and read a book while she stares and stares until finally her eyelids drop.

I was reading Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, which I find fascinating, and suddenly she said, so totally out of the blue:

- I want Baba to die before you.

I fairly couldn’t disguise my shock. That’s probably why she changed to:

- I don’t want you and Baba to die before me.

And still I was speechless. So she said:

- I only want people that I don’t know to die. Tell me all the people I know who have died! Tell me their names!

- No one you know has died. But Opa’s Mama and Baba have died.

- As well as Oma’s Mama and Baba, and Thamm’s Mama and Baba, and Dada’s Baba.

Maybe listing all those dead Mamas and Babas was not a good idea. So I added:

- But what is dying? I don’t find it scary at all. Our bodies just fall apart, and then there’s nothing.

- Our brains stop working, right?

- Yes, no more thinking or dreaming or sleeping or walking or playing…

- That’s so boring!

- Well, you can’t even be bored,  because you’re dead.

While she pondered this I had the occasion to regret my cop-out. She was talking not of dying, but of being left behind. So I said, more honestly this time:

- Don’t worry about dying, because we don’t know when we’ll die, you or I, and worrying about it doesn’t make a difference.

Was she content with that? She fell silent, and I returned to my book, and she stared at me for a while, then fell asleep.

{other conversations about death here and here and here}

…

I got the news that they’ve made a movie of McCarthy’s book, The Road - with Vigo Mortensen, so a mainstream movie. I am of course not going to see it (I must be nuts!), but part of me is extremely anxious for those who will, and another part is extremely curious about the effect.  But mainly just thinking about it gives me the shivers.

It’s coming down hard: thick globs of melting snow. The wood stove is giving off enough heat to dispel any gloom: it’s merely cozy, as long as I don’t need to go out there.

Which I did have to, earlier on. One of the rain barrels was overflowing, and not through the overflow tube. In this weather I would have left it but the excess water was undermining the cinder blocks the heavy barrel is sitting on, slowly eroding away the soft soil. I didn’t relish the thought of it coming down right by the side of the house and the bed with the chard.

So out I went, and shook the overflow pipe, but nothing came out but a dreadful stink. O-ow, dead animal alert! I opened the barrel’s lid and saw the hind part of a chipmunk sticking out of the overflow pipe. It must have crawled up the pipe in drier weather, landed in the water, then made it back to the pipe only to get stuck.

It had that ghostly look of a thing dead in water. That half looked well preserved in the cold water, and I only considered for a second what the other half looked like. When I tried to dislodge it with a stick its skin just came off. I un-threaded the pipe and as the excess water suddenly rushed out all over me I shook the poor dead beast out in the bushes.

I usually take a picture of any dead animal I see (here and here and here) but this one, well, it was just too gruesome.

We’re spending the rest of the day inside, drawing animal tracks in snow. Squirrels, deer, chipmunks…

Confluence:

1.

Derrick Jensen’s thought-provoking article in Orion Magazine, “Forget Short Showers” (July/August 2009):

The second problem [with wholly personal measures such as taking shorter showers, which Jensen finds "utterly insufficient"]—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

2.

This article in Scientific American (via the red mullet) about Phosphorous depletion:

Land ecosystems use and reuse phosphorus in local cycles an average of 46 times. The mineral then, through weathering and runoff, makes its way into the ocean, where marine organisms may recycle it some 800 times before it passes into sediments. Over tens of millions of years tectonic uplift may return it to dry land.

Harvesting breaks up the cycle because it removes phosphorus from the land. In prescientific agriculture, when human and animal waste served as fertilizers, nutrients went back into the soil at roughly the rate they had been withdrawn. But our modern society separates food production and consumption, which limits our ability to return nutrients to the land. Instead we use them once and then flush them away.

3. The poll I posted many months back: “Why do/ don’t you simplify/reduce/prepare for a Peak Oil/Global Warming future?” The results (voters could vote for more than one option):

62 votes for “I do”

a) 11 (18%): because I think if we all do this, we could turn this thing around

b) 6 (10%): I don’t know if we can save the day, but I simplify to prepare, in case it’s bad

c.) 12 (19%): It’s going to get bad, so I simplify to prepare (e.g. to get used to living with less)

d) 25 (40%): I simplify out of principle (e.g., take only what you need), regardless of the future

e) 7 (11%): I simplify because it saves me money

f) 1 (2%): Other

1 vote for “I don’t”

1 (100%): The problem is real, and the future bad, but my simplifying won’t change that

4.

Jay Griffiths’ great article in the same Orion Magazine, about the Transition Initiative.

A WHILE AGO, I heard an American scientist address an audience in Oxford, England, about his work on the climate crisis. He was precise, unemotional, rigorous, and impersonal: all strengths of a scientist.

The next day, talking informally to a small group, he pulled out of his wallet a much-loved photo of his thirteen-year-old son. He spoke as carefully as he had before, but this time his voice was sad, worried, and fatherly. His son, he said, had become so frightened about climate change that he was debilitated, depressed, and disturbed. Some might have suggested therapy, Prozac, or baseball for the child. But in this group one voice said gently, “What about the Transition Initiative?”

[...] Many people feel that individual action on climate change is too trivial to be effective but that they are unable to influence anything at a national, governmental level. They find themselves paralyzed between the apparent futility of the small-scale and impotence in the large-scale. The Transition Initiative works right in the middle, at the scale of the community, where actions are significant, visible, and effective.

[...] Many people today experience a strange hollow in the psyche, a hole the size of a village.

5.

I recognize that child. When I was around the same age (12) I watched The Day After, a movie that will, unfortunately, haunt me forever (I wrote about it before). Oil (and phosphate and…) depletion, global warming, economic collapse, famine migrations: they are the new nuclear threat - worse, they are fact, not threat - on top of the old nuclear threat. The well-informed twelve-year-old and this particular 29-year-old fall into despair.

So why do I do what I do? Why do I grow my own vegetables, make compost, line-dry my laundry? Why do I take short showers, close waste and energy loops on my “homestead”? Why am I on the lookout for a wood stove, a solar battery charger, a high pressure canner? Why am I drawing up plans for a root cellar and a chicken coop, and skimming through catalogs for fruit trees and berry bushes? Why do I refuse to “go shopping”? And despairing of ever having those rain barrels installed?

Not because I think we (as in you and I, all of us individuals) can turn this thing around - I agree with Jensen on that. I do it out of principle - I am convinced that to take only what you need is good for the soul. And to prepare my family, my daughter especially. But that’s not enough. It will not be enough if it’s just me, and on the other hand I feel helpless on the national, even state level (the level where a million to millions of lives and lifestyles are at stake).

So there it is, for me too: the middle ground. Transition. I too have a hole in my heart, the size of a town. This town. Working on and living in a Transition Town is, I think, the only way for me to live somewhat peacefully with what is happening.

My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago, after a prolonged illness. Again I couldn’t be in Belgium for the funeral, nor could I fly over to see him during those three weeks that he was in the hospital. But I did call him at the hospital every other day. Usually the conversation was very brief, because he was short of breath, or tired, and because he dislikes the telephone.

But our last conversation, the day before he died, was longer. He asked how the garden went, and could I email pictures of it to my dad, who could then bring them on his laptop. My grandfather was a gardener too - the only gardener in my family , in fact, till I took up this crazy business, recently. He grew many vegetables, apple and pear and cherry trees, and a compost heap (I remember the hilarious experiments with worms).

I wanted so much for him to see how well all my vegetables and herbs are growing. I didn’t get to send the pictures - even if I had that moment, it would have been too late. Then it rained, and rained. But here they are, some pictures I took on a brighter day:

The old cold frame (lights removed, fenced in with, yes, repurposed shelving) with cherry tomato, lettuce and chard, and day lilies, and path to the garden.

Potato towers in forefront, more potatoes in beds in back.

Beans on a gloomier day  no luck with the lentils, in front, they’re not growing. Notice the big pile of stones to the left: that’s not half the stones we dug out of the ground. In the background to the left you can see the scaffolding for the tomatoes. I have no close-up pictures of it, though, because… it started raining. Sigh.

{UPDATE} Aha! A couple of hours after posting this entry the clouds cleared and I could run out to take a picture of the tomato and eggplant beds:

• Grosbeak

In the early morning I passed by the window without my glasses on and spotted something colorful at the bird feeder. Something very colorful and unfamiliar, though hazy. I rushed to get my glasses: it was a new bird, and I guessed that it was a Grosbeak. I got the camera and the bird obliged, visiting for another ten minutes.

When I sat down in the sofa with my bird book Amie immediately imitated me, getting her animal book, sitting down right next to me, and finding the animals she was spotting. It was incredibly sweet. Turns out it was a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It’s a summer resident.

• Eggs

A week ago I also found some eggs in the garden where a tree was cut down. One was broken, the other two intact, which I took inside and put into one of my bowls, thinking I might find a way of preserving them. Then I flat forgot about them, until today, when I found one broken (or rather, burst) open: it had a half developed little chick inside.

I threw them in the compost. Anyone know what birds these eggs belong to?

• Robin Hill

You’d have thought the Robins would have chosen a different spot for their nest this Spring - no longer the rafters of our carport, where last year they had to fly off each time someone approached. They did choose a different spot… about a foot away from the old nest! It’s tough to photograph them - I don’t want to use a flash. Here’s a glimpse:

There were four little robins at first, and then there were only three. One fell out of the nest, it was lying dead on the pavement next to the car. I took pictures, of course - dead wild animals afford that rare close look - and then disposed of the body for some lucky fox or cat. It’s part of the great cycle of life, but how sad.

It’s not that I chose not to tell Amie, it just didn’t come up. She  climbed on the ladder to see the remaining three chicks and was wowed.

Next year, if they choose to grace us with their presence again, I want to install a live webcam.

I have been looking for a name for our tiny homestead. We’re on a hill and have lots of chipmunks, so I was thinking “Chipmunk Hill”, but in honor of our Robins we’ll call it Robin Hill - I like the Robin Hood connotation!

(It’s that dead bird again)

Well, at bedtime Amie again asked to talk about the dead baby penguin. Again she wanted to know why there was no blood. Was it really dead? I explained that it died because it was too cold. Probably its heart stopped working. I explained that our blood needs to circulate - go round and round - in our bodies and that the heart is a big pump that does that, and we listened to each other’s heartbeat (it will be a new game; she also loves to put her ear to my jaw when I eat crunchy things, which makes her laugh out loud). Then we slowly came to the heart of the matter, for her, on this evening.:

- If you’re a human, do you have to be a grown-up to die?

- Well, sometimes children die too, but not so often. They’d have to be really sick, or in an accident.

- But if S [friend at school] died, I could no longer play with her. I could still play with C and E, though [more friends at school]. But not with S anymore.

- Well, mostly, in this country, children grow up to be adults.

- But I was really sick, and I didn’t get dead.

- That wasn’t sick enough. Much sicker.

- If we die together, like in an accident, we could hold hands and still love each other. If you die first, I will still love you. But I will still have Baba and S and C and E at school to play with. That will be ficient [sufficient]. But I will still love you even though you’re dead. And I could still hug you, if you die with your arms open a bit [demonstrates]. Not if you close your arms [narrows her arms], then I wouldn’t fit. We could hold hands then.

- Usually, though, when someone dies, they take away the body, because it gets all smelly and rotten, because the blood no longer circulates through it and so no longer keeps it fresh. So they bury it in the ground or burn it up in a big, bright flame.

- I will still love you then, even though you’re not here.

Then the conversation turned to whether all her friends, E and C and some others (note: not S anymore) could come and live with us, and where would be put them to sleep and where would their Mamas and Babas sleep.

None of this - and nothing in our earlier conversations - was said morosely or sadly. It was simply matter-of-fact talk. She is trying out the concept of death, lingering mostly at its fringes: the poses we die in, would there be blood. Sometimes she gets at the heart of it, like today, when she considered what it would be like if her friend or I died, what she would do, if it would still be sufficient for her. But even then it is a trying-out of the thought of it, not the feeling. That’s why I am not worried: it is safe. And being so open about it, answering all her question without flinching, safeguards that safety and her trust in me.

In the evening Amie watched March of the Penguins. We had shown it to her about half a year ago but she wasn’t interested then. This time she was, going “oh so cute!” and so forth, but really paying attention when the little chick dies of exposure and the mother mourns over it.

- what happened to it?

- it died because it was too cold.

- but no, it didn’t get dead. Look, it’s moving, like this. [makes sad little movements with her head]

- no, sweetie, it’s dead.

- what is the mother trying to do now?

- the mother is so sad she is trying to steal a chick from another mother.

- stealing isn’t nice.

- see, the pack doesn’t allow it and the chick is back with its mother.

When we went to bed she wanted to sit in the pile of blankets to keep her egg warm. Then she wanted to talk about the penguins.

- I especially want to talk about when the chick got dead. I liked that.

- you liked it? Do you mean it made you happy?

- no.

- so you mean you are interested in it.

- yes. It’s interesting.

I had to explain again why the chick had died.

- but I didn’t see any blood.

- it wasn’t wounded, it was just too cold.

- can I have a baby penguin? It’s not too cold here.

- it’s too warm here. Penguins like it cold, but not too cold.

Seconds later:

- promise me we will die next to one another? [this while holding my head, her nose nearly touching mine, her eyes locked to mine]

- I can’t promise that, sweetie. We don’t know when we’ll die. It’s mostly not in our control.

- we could die in an accident.

- yes, or when we grow old and it’s time.

- but we don’t die on the cross. Only Jesus died on the cross. What is Jesus’ Mama’s name?

- Mary - not the Mary we know. A different Mary.

- What’s her last name?

- I don’t know.

- Jesus died and then Mary died too. They went far away. As far as… Auntie R. That was a long drive.

A little later:

- Mama, can we have another baby? But I want it to be a girl. We can call it Amie.

- but you are Amie. So we couldn’t call her Amie!

- but what if I die? And I still want to pinch your arm? [arm pinching is a leftover from nursing: she does it when tired or sad and when falling asleep]

I was dumbfounded. A weird thing, that statement: “Amie” (II) would still be pinching my arm, and that seemed to make her feel better about dying. Such a strange concept of identity, such fearless exploration of what death is and what it means to her! She soon fell asleep.

I’ve written about how I want to communicate to my daughter about death here.

I had three very strange conversations with Amie today.

• Part one

Out of the blue (we were washing hands) she said:

- Pooh Bear is very fluffy so he will never die again.

- So you think if you’re fluffy you can’t die?

- Yes. But I am not fluffy, so I am going to die. Some day. And you are not fluffy, so you are going to die too. We’ll lie down together and lie next to each other and our crosses will be next to each other. And the body goes away, right? And only our bones are left over.

• Part two

Later I asked:

- Which crosses were you talking about?

- Like Jesus’ cross.

- But we don’t usually die on the cross like Jesus. We die when we’re very sick or very old, or in an accident. It could be we go to sleep and just don’t wake up.

- When we lie down? We can die when we lie down, or when we’re holding something, or even when we talking?

- Yes.

- They say you can come back after you die.

- Oh, like Jesus you mean? Usually though when we die we don’t come back. Jesus was an exception.

- No, all of us.

- O yes, some people believe that. I don’t know, though.

• Part three

Ten minutes later I asked if we should put some music on. She asked:

- Do we have any Jesus music?

- How do you mean?

- Music with Jesus?

- We don’t have a recording of Jesus, but there is music about Jesus. You want that?

- Yes, Jesus music please.

~

Later I was on the phone with DH, who was working late, and mentioned this strange conversation.

- Ah, he said, I think I know why.

Turns out that yesterday, when I was at my pottery class, Amie had said that her Pooh Bear (her stuffed bear) was dead.

- He died, she had said.

DH had explained that Pooh Bear couldn’t die, because he was just a toy bear, and not alive to begin with. He had said:

- He’s just made of fluff. He doesn’t even have any blood.

- Do we have blood?

And that had lead to a conversation about the body.

Aha. “Made of fluff” and “fluffy”… It’s the mind of the three-and-a-half-year-old!