More Kids' Talk

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Easter is coming up and I noticed a poster around town with a man covered in blood called Mysteria Paschalis or some such. It reminded me of when, at Easter time last year, K and I would regularly take the tram to preschool instead of driving, and the trams featured posters with Mary holding a very bloody sheet. Soon enough, my daughter started to get interested in them. Who was the woman with the dirty sheet? What was it on the sheet? Hmmm. I explained that she was Jesus' mother, and the sheet was covered in his blood as he'd been hurt. "Eh, it'll wash out," was her calm reply.

On a different note, the kids are very into Mary Poppins. I've bought the latest enhanced DVD version and they watch it in two languages. S's favourite scene features the filthy chimney sweeps dancing on the roof tops. When Michael looked into the chimney and got covered in a thick blanket of soot, Szymus said "Look at all that clean soot on his face." Anyway, this leads me to a potentially very embarrassing situation. In January we were flying back to Poland from a skiing holiday in France via Munich. Once we were seated on the plane, a very dark-skinned man walked past towards his seat. "Look, what a filthy chimney sweep!" exclaimed Szymus. We were very lucky that man didn't understand Polish. Before I could explain, Karolinka stepped in - "No," she said rationally, "Some people have darker skin, that's all." It looks like my kids are growing up to be racially tolerant, which is so important for me in Poland (still very backwards when it comes to accepting different races and skin colour).

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