She loves magazines.  She loves them so much that she often takes them to bed with her; you can hear here flipping through the pages before she finally falls asleep.  And though she doesn’t truly know how to read yet, she still loves looking through the pages, pointing out things she knows, and asking what other things are.

Then, the other day, she walked out of the bathroom with my American Hunter magazine in hand.  On the cover was a teenage boy proudly holding up a dead snowshoe hare he had just bagged; the elation he felt could hardly be hid, considering the smile on his face stretched from one ear to the other.

I knew the question was about to come.  “Daddy, what’s he doing?” she asked.  “He’s hunting, honey,” I said.  And I definitely knew what was coming next, because I could already see her finger begin to point.  “What’s that?” she said, as she pointed at the dead rabbit he was holding up.  “It’s a bunny,” I told her.

I could see the wheels starting to turn, and I could foresee what question was about to come next.  “What’s the bunny doing?” she asked.

That’s when I started to go through the thought process that every parent tends to go through:  should I tell her a little white lie and move on?  Or tell her the truth and try to help her to understand?  I believe certain things do need to be sheltered from her, but this wasn’t one of them.  I gave her my simple answer.

“He’s dead,” I said.  “Why?” she asked.  “Because the boy killed him, so he can eat him for dinner,” I told her.  I received a simple reply for that explanation.  “Yuck,” she said, followed by, “I don’t want to eat him for dinner.”

Hopefully she grows out of the last part.

But faced with telling her the truth about where her food comes from, or telling a lie, I didn’t even hesitate; there was absolutely no way I was going to paint a perfect picture for her about how cute and cuddly bunnies are, and that nothing ever dies.

I’ll leave that task and fable to Walt Disney.

I was going to tell her the truth, and tell her the truth is what I did – even though it did provide me with an answer that I didn’t really like.  And there was no way, within her two year old brain, that I was going to convince her that rabbits actually are very tasty, and a lot of fun to hunt.  To her, rabbits are still soft, furry, and cute; they’re not food.

I’m okay with that, though, and I’m happy with the entire conversation.  I told the truth, she processed it and gave me her honest feelings about it at this point in her life, and we moved on.

I guess I could have told her that he “was sleeping”, or some other fairy tale – but I wasn’t going to do that.  I always told myself that she was going to know the truth about where her food comes from right from the start; and whether she understands it at all – this early in her life – isn’t the point.  The real point of the whole conversation is that we took the first step – the first step in helping her to understand how food arrives at her table.

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