Do you believe in Santa?

He could have asked differently, challenged me to come out with it - 'Does Santa exist?' But he didn't. He asked 'Do you believe in Santa?' Asking for my opinion, not wanting black or white. Giving me room to deflect. In his very protected 8 years of life, he has come to trust my judgement. It's flattering and humbling in equal measure. Where is this heading, will I have to open the whole can of worms? Are there really Tooth fairies and Easter Bunnies and how are babies really made? We're going to have to come clean with them sooner or later. I can tell he's on the fence with this, he could go either way. His voice says there's not much time left to buy.

But there is some, and I'm going to use it. Whatever the skeptics may say, there is a point to all this yarn spinning. Childhood is so fleeting. The trusting innocence and boundless imagination is here and then it's gone. To never be re-created again in any other phase of our skeptical age and life. How dreary would the world be without that priceless look on faces with childlike faith in magic and make-belief! How conceited and dreadfully dull to claim, only that can be seen and touched is real. All things in this great universe not comprehensible to our doubtful minds just couldn't be. There couldn't be a God, or love or life on Mars. And what would inspire poetry and romance and all that makes this existence vibrant and exciting? The wisdom of Lucy has answered these for me.

“There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realise what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.” - L. M. Montgomery.

'Do you believe in Santa?' he gently presses.
'I like to honey, I like to believe in Santa'. Stay my child, for as long as you like in the age of gold.
Satisfied, he replied, 'Me too!'