Tough Questions from Morgan

Tonight when he was supposed to be going to sleep, Morgan was busy thinking. He insisted, between yawns, that he was not in fact tired. He snapped his fingers--a recently acquired skill--and wrestled with his bedclothes. He sang songs to himself, and went over in a whisper the steps used to form some of the upper-case letters he's been learning at Occupational Therapy.

"Mama," he asked, "are Huckle and Lowly and their friends real?"
"No, they're cartoons."
"Oh. 'Cause I wish that Huckle was my twin brother, and Lowly was our other brother, and Huckle's sister was our little sister. Then I could play with them all the time."
"Yes, that would be nice. Close your eyes, now."

For a few minutes he adjusted his sheets, asking me each time to re-apply his blankie (it has to be flat, cold, and laid just so on his chest). Then, apropos of nothing, he began a new line of questioning:

"I don't really understand how you can choose when you have a baby and when you don't. How does a mama do that?"
"Well," I stalled. "Um. You can keep the sperm and the egg from meeting each other. Because the egg and the sperm have to meet to start growing a baby, remember?"
"Yeah. But I mean, when the sperm comes out of Papa's penis. How come you can't just say what you want?" he went on.
"I'm not sure I know what you're asking," I said.
"Why can't you just say what you want? Because I really would love to have Huckle as my brother."

Trying not to laugh, I explain about how humans can't make cat babies and why. And I remind him, again, that Huckle is just a cartoon. He seems to get it, remembering that babies are made of instructions from the mama and instructions from the papa, and that both Casey and I are decidedly not feline and cannot pass on any cat instructions.

"Well," he says, "what about Lowly?"