The "G" Question

By Patricia Dunn

"The words are penis and vagina." These were the first and last words my mother ever spoke to me about sex.

I was ten when I ran into our three bedroom Bronx apartment
announcing that I knew exactly how the whole baby thing worked. Fourteen-year-old Maryanne from across the street had told me all about it. My mother sat me down at the dining table built for a room twice the size and-glaring at her taupe polished nails--said, "Tell me what you know."

"A guy takes his c . . . and puts it in to a girl's c . . . . ."

"The words are penis and vagina. Now go play." And that's all she said.

For years I had given my mother a hard time about this. She didn't have to draw me a diagram, but where was the discussion about meaning, action, and consequence, let alone emotions? "How do you feel about this?"

When my son started to talk, I stopped giving my mother a hard time about most things. I've learned the hard way, and I am still learning, that as a parent I can't be prepared for every question my son throws at me. But some do push me over the edge of reason more than others.

"Mommy, what if there isn't a God," Ali recently asked on our drive home from Bingo night, his elementary school's umpteenth fundraiser. I raised the volume on the radio Disney station Ali listens to when I need some down time. "What if there isn't a God, then what?" he shouted over one of those midriff-baring pop singer's vocals. My diversionary tactic hadn't worked. This time, I heard the fear in his voice. It was the same tone he used when he was three, asking, "What if the monsters get you and Baba at night?"

I should have pulled the car over, turned to him, and said something to comfort him; just like my mother should have said something to prepare me for my bourgeoning sexuality, but--like mother like daughter--I dodged the question. Coming to a partial stop at the next stop sign I said, "We'll talk about this tomorrow after we've had a good night's sleep."

In fairness to my mother, she’d at least given me two words on the subject of sex: penis and vagina. I hadn't been able to give Ali one syllable on the question of God's existence. Questions about sex I was prepared to answer. Several of my friends with children Ali's age had already been asked where babies come from. I was armed with age-appropriate, award-winning books on loan like, Mommy Laid an Egg or Where Do Babies Come From.

"What if there isn't a God?" You’d think I would have a picture book or a clue as how to answer that one.

As someone who had converted from Catholicism to Islam seventeen years earlier, I had given years of thought to what or who God was and the role faith had played in my life. My question, however, was never whether God existed. I grew up in a Bronx-Italian-Catholic neighborhood, where God's existence was a given.

I had always questioned the givens that I was raised with, but God's existence--unlike ones that said girls didn't go to college but got married and had babies--I didn't dare question. I was a Bronx girl. We had the often earned reputation of being tough, but not one of the tough Bronx girls I knew, the Catholic ones anyway, dared to mess with God. God scared the shit out of us. He called the shots. He let Mrs. Tauger, my fifth grade teacher, yell at me in front of the whole class to stop chewing on my hair, which I only did because she made me nervous. He fractured my brother's arm after he was told not to jump off the roof of the car but did any way. And he killed my friend Barbara when he gave her leukemia at twelve.

It wasn’t until I found Islam that I truly believed that God was compassionate and merciful. And I no longer was afraid.

And so Ali’s father and I have brought up our son within the Islamic faith. We have talked to Ali about religion and faith and politics and social justice since he was old enough to babble. We've tried to show him what it means for us to be Muslim. We took him to mosques to pray, demonstrations to protest, and gave class presentations every Ramadan since Ali started school, so that Ali could share his family's holiday with his friends.

What is God? I've been giving him my answer all along. But what if there isn't a God? Why did this question make my stomach hurt? Was it my history? Was I afraid that even considering the possibility that there isn't God would bring back the scared Bronx girl in me? Or for me to consider the absence of God would mean considering that my quest to make peace with God was a total waste of time?

After I put Ali to bed that night I logged on to my computer hoping that his father-- who was now working and living in Dubai--was on-line. It was two in the morning but he had always been a late night person.

He was logged on.

"I'd tell him there would be no meaning to any thing," he typed. "But a lot of people don't believe in God and life makes sense to them. You have to tell him what makes you feel comfortable." I should have anticipated his response. When it came to matters of faith Ali’s father had always insisted I figure it out for myself.

Next I phoned one of those people who didn't believe in God but was able to make sense of life, or at least as much sense as I did. I had just seen her at Bingo night. I told her what Ali said and she said something I didn't expect to hear from a devout atheist. "Some times I wish I could give my five year-old a belief in God," she said. "I think it would help him sleep at night."

I thought again about the fear in Ali's voice when he asked "what if." Maybe, I thought, all I had to do was to give him an answer that would make him feel secure. After all, wasn't Ali, like most children his age, always looking for the black and white and good guy vs. bad guy scenarios? Don't children find security in the definitive? Obviously, I know I do. Only, as an adult, I'm expected to accept and deal with the gray in this world.

I called my mother, the Queen of "This is the way it is." (I lived downstairs from her, but she has an easier time talking to me over the phone about things that matter than she does in person.) If “penis and vagina” were anything, they were concrete.

"Just tell him: We wouldn't be here."

There was my definitive answer. I felt relieved until I realized that I didn't want my son growing up with "givens" he was too scared to question. I wanted my son to believe in God, but not because he was afraid not to believe, but because--after all was asked and answered--he found his faith got him through his day and helped him sleep better at night.

The next morning Ali was more concerned about the existence of a prize at the bottom of his cereal box than he was about the existence of God. I thought about letting it go. But I knew my son. The question would surface again soon, probably at dinner.

"Ali?" I pulled his hand out of the cereal box. A small green moon was stuck to his thumb.

"Mommy, I almost had it."

"Remember last night when you asked me what if there isn't a God?"

"Can I pour the whole box out into a bowl?"

"What do you think the answer is?"

"I won't make a mess."

"Not the cereal. About God?"

"I don't know," he shrugged.

"I don't know either. Go ahead, pour all the cereal out." I handed him a large empty bowl, happy for once to have given him a concrete answer.

"Thank you, Mommy," he smiled.

Patricia Dunn is a free-lance writer and managing editor of MWU.