“Mama, will you mawwy me?” Is there anything that squeezes your heart more? My squiggly little man is growing up faster than I can draw breath, but he’s still got that sweet little toddler lisp that makes his “r’s” a little blurry, and he still has that deep abiding love for his mama that I pray he never loses. Earlier in the year, he picked up this idea that we were going to get married, and since then, he’s just taken it and RUN with it.

“Let’s go get you a dwess, Mama, and we’ll go to the church.”
It’s not Sunday, baby, you can go to church with Nonna on Sunday.
“No, we got to go to the church so we can get mawwied.”
Ohhhhhh…
“Let’s go do that tomahwoe!”

He’s not a discriminate lover of the idea of marriage, either, and it doesn’t appear that he’s geared up quite yet to be a one-woman kinda man. So far, he’s said that he intends to marry not only me, but also his sister, his Nonna, and my best friend (whom he calls Aunt Shona).

While I think it’s hilarious and sweet, I know that one day, there will need to be a short little discussion as to why none of that is actually possible, but for now, who am I to crush his dreams of happily ever after? The only thing that would make him happier, right this second, than getting to be in a wedding with the most important and favorite women in his life, is maybe to get to meet SpongeBob in person or to sit down and play Minecraft in the same room as Tobuscus.

One day last week, though, we hit a little snag. His dad, my husband, asked, “Who’s your best friend?” expecting, I’m sure, the sweet little “YOU ARE, Deddy!” that should have come tumbling out of his grape popsicle-stained lips. Instead, what he got was “MAMA IS. Her’s my best fwend, and we’re gonna get mawwied.” Never one to be outdone, his dad feigned a pout, and said, “What? You mean you don’t want to marry me too??” I’m a little embarrassed to tell you the rest of this conversation now that I’ve started it. But what my son replied to that was “No, Deddy, we can’t get mawwied. You a boy.”

That gave me pause. My Kindergartener thinks straight marriages are the only ones there are? MY son? What the what?! [Insert needless ranting here about how I’m a huge ally and advocate, and so are our teens.] My friends told me later that since it’s all he sees, of course that’s all he knows, and that as he gets older and sees a little more diversity among our friends, and with his friends’ parents, that he’ll understand it a little better. For now, all I said was “Boys can marry boys if they want to, honey. Sure they can,” as my husband groused from across the room under his breath, “Not here, they can’t.” But a political discussion about state’s rights versus common human decency and how far behind our state is in the human rights struggle for equality is not really a discussion I want to have with my five-year-old right now, so I left it at that. “Boys can marry boys if they want to.”

“Now,” says his dad, “so are me and you getting married tomorrow?”

“No,” my son shoots back, “you got pokeys on your chin. You should go shave and then mawwy Mama again tonight.”