Ashes

After receiving our Lenten ashes at Mass last night:

PATCH (age 6):  Daddy!  I didn’t cry when the priest put the ashes on my forehead!

ME: Yes, I saw that you didn’t.  You’re getting to be a big girl now.

PATCH:  It doesn’t bother me anymore.

ME:  Well, it really shouldn’t.

PATCH: Yes.  Now I don’t mind having them put a dead body on me.

ME: Uh … what?

Then it dawned on me.  Last year Patch got all freaked out over receiving her ashes – cried, whined, couldn’t wait to wash them off – because she thought the ashes were from a cremated body!

ME: (laughing) No, sweetie.  Those aren’t ashes from a dead body.  They burn last year’s palms, you know, the long leafy thingies they hand out on Palm Sunday.  They burn those, and those are the ashes that they put on your forehead.

Oh, kids.  Though we never seem to believe it, there’s often a reason behind their unreasonableness.  Will I, as an adult, ever figure that out, before my two little ones become adults themselves?