The good cut

my mother is going in for thyroid surgery this afternoon. I've been trying to explain the situation to Ro for the last week but it just seemed to go in one ear and out the other. He basically had no response. I don't think he wanted to listen. I finally got him to listen to me about it tonight as I was putting him to bed and he was devastated. He was sooo sad and anxious about Grandma and "the doctor that was going to cut her throat". He prayed for Grandma and then rolled around in bed for quite awhile. Later, I could hear him praying for Grandma again so I went in to assuage his fears. When he saw me, he said, "Mommy, we need to get the soldiers to -- to--- to cut the doctor on his face and then shoot him! AAUGH!" I was a quite surprised at this because I thought I had thoroughly explained that the doctor was HELPING Grandma by cutting her - but he was definitely having visions of Grandma being in danger from a knife wielding evil doctor. I ended up having to go into surgical procedures in much more detail than I would have expected. I tried to be even more reassuring and explain that they have to cut the skin just to move it out of the way. It will hurt but then they'll put her back together again. Ro suggested tape would be a good way to put Grandma's throat back together. I said the doctor would use thread but he said I was being silly because the doctor would need to use yarn --because it was bigger than thread. It ended up being a funny conversation and he finally went to sleep ok. Not really the sort of conversation you want to have at bed time but it ended up fine. He also called Grandma this morning to talk to her about it a little bit and tell her that God would keep her safe. It was sweet.

The soldier comment also really surprised me because I just explained "soldiers/military" to him earlier in the day when we saw to Marines who were collecting Toys for Tots outside of a local toy shop.