He’s Leaving Home, Bye Bye
So yesterday my son started his first day of kindergarten. It was exciting for all of us. He’s been getting ready for a month now, picking up school supplies and clothes and all the other various stuff that a big little man on campus needs. He looked and acted like any other kindergartener except our little boy has the secret of being a witch. (Insert dramatic music here)
Normally this is no big deal; it’s the normal at home. But my husband has developed a fear that our little secret will come out and our son will have to suffer because of it. I suppose I have a tiny bit of that fear. It’s that same fear that occasionally has me tuck my pentacle inside my shirt. But my son is different. I raised him that way. Or rather, I just raised him as though all this is completely normal (which it is, to us) and he’s taken it from there.
Big boy had his first fight about mommy being a witch when he was in Pre School. He told his best friend that his mommy was a witch and his friend told him that witches don’t exist. I’m told this back and forth of “yes they do” “no they don’t” quickly escalated into a shoving match. Needless to say, hubby was less than thrilled. There is a silver lining to this story. No more than two days later when I went to pick up Big Boy at school I was quickly surrounded by a group of girls as soon as my son called to me. “He says you’re a witch. Are you a real witch?” they asked. Now I’ve made a promise to my self and the Mystery to never lie if asked outright so I answered, “Yes, I am.” There was a moment of silence as they mulled this over before they all broke into smiles and yelled “COOL!” They ran of to play again and I was let with just my son looking very proud.
These two events stuck with me. But they also put me into the position of having to have the ‘secrecy” talk with my son. When I started down the path I remember learning the rule of secrecy and it has never sat well with me. To me it seems by denying your faith you some what diminish it. I understand that everyone has their own right to privacy and that discrimination does still happen and people do have a right to conceal aspects of their life for personal safety. I explained to my son the best way that I could about how some people don’t understand magick and sometimes that scares them. I also told him that we don’t have to lie about it; we just don’t have to tell everyone about it.
So as I send my son off to school he knows that it’s a muggle school. Magick talk can wait until he’s home or on the train to Hogwarts (which he truly believes will happen when he’s eleven). I don’t really think that anything will cause a problem until he’s older and children start asking more personal questions than can I eat your paste, too. I can only hope that by that age he will have more eloquent answers to baffle the masses with or that no one will mind because everyone will be comfortable with diversity. What’s my preference, diversity all the way of course. But I still hold out the hope for the ‘eloquence to baffle the masses’. He’ll need that when he’s President!
Stumbling towards Enlightenment
Euraid Eyre
