Henry VIII

My sister gave Ian a volume of the Horrible Histories - particularly, "Cruel Kings and Mean Queens" - perfect for the enthusiasms of his age, and just precocious enough, in terms of reading complexity. Ian was reading from this tome, with Daniel eagerly listening for every - literally- gory detail. And then they got to the section on Henry VIII - or "Henry Eight" and Ian would call him.

The reading and reporting was completely undertaken by Ian, but - not entirely to my astonishment - young Daniel was very, very interested in Henry VIII and his methodologies for resolving marital frustrations. And these methodologies were quite thoroughly described in Ian's text.

But there was one particularly touching moment, when Ian asked me, "Daddy, what does 'divorced' mean?"

At the risk of getting "heavy," by the time I was Ian's age, I knew extremely well what divorce meant, and it was actually part of our popular culture. In fact, we sometimes watched a television show called "Divorce Court." So I'm very grateful to God (I know it's not to my own credit) that Ian discovered the word "divorce" as late as age eight, and by reading about Henry VIII.

In any case, I explained to the boys that Henry's entire agenda was focused around begetting a male heir to succeed him as King of England, and toward that objective, he went to very unconventional extremes to relieve-from-duty each of the women he believed responsible for the chronic failure of his revolving enterprise to churn out a healthy Y-chromosome-bearing successor.

At that point, Daniel saw parallels in his own life that highlight our own fortune, in contrast to the founder of the English Reformation:

"I think if Mommy were there, he would be happy to have Mommy."

I double-checked, and yes, Daniel was saying that King Henry VIII would be happy to have Mommy - Daniel's own Mommy - for a wife, because she has a track record of bearing not one, but two baby boys. I told Daniel, correctly as usual, that any man would be happy to have Mommy.

But Daniel quickly alleged, in response - probably quite inaccurately - that Mommy sometimes yells at Daddy. Without missing a beat, Ian, relied on the wisdom of his superior years to put the whole matter into context:

"But Daniel, no wife is perfect."

One wonders how many lives would have been spared, and how much upheaval avoided, if Ian could have time-traveled to 16th-century England, to provide a bit of expedient insight to a frantic, reckless King Henry...

(January 9, 2012)