Father and son

Because I Love You

Why do children say the things they do? Why do any of us say anything?

I’ve learned that asking why can sometimes put people on the defensive, so I tend to avoid it. But on one particular occasion, I asked my son why he did something. Without blinking, he simply said, “Because I love you.”

It caught me off guard. It wasn’t exactly the wrong answer, but it didn’t seem to fit either. And yet, in its own way, it was perfect. How do you even respond to something so oddly perfect?

That phrase became his catch-all response, something he used whenever he didn’t have a more precise answer. Again, it was never wrong — in fact, it was so profoundly right that it just didn’t seem to belong in those moments.

And yet, it always was.

The Descent Out of Madness

Sometimes why questions carry an edge of frustration: “Why would you do this?!” But “Because I love you” short-circuits that frustration, it worked beautifully, with me anyway. It dissolved any and all energies into a ‘really?’

That reminds me of one of my stuffed animals. I had a talking Bugs Bunny. You pulled the string and it would say catch phrases. My grandmother, my mom’s mom, the one I had the most…