How Do You Explain Divorce?

My son Duke is lucky.  He has no clue what it's like to grow up with divorced parents.  I have divorced parents who have remarried and so does my husband.  Duke has been told that Grandpa (my stepfather) is not my father, but since my father also died when I was young, it clouds things even more for he and his younger brother and sister.

Tonight Duke came home from soccer practice.  His coach is Italian (and I don't mean Brooklyn-Italian).  Duke is impressed with his coach and happens to think his Italian Grandpa is pretty great too. 

Luc was showing me a pullback in the living room (groan... I was really trying to weigh the urge to enforce the "no balls in the living room rule" and his excitement at a fun practice tonight.)  He asked, "Mommy, am I part Italian?" 

"Huh?"

"You know, 'cause Grandpa's Italian.  So does that make all of us part Italian?"

"Well, no.  He's not...."  I hesitated.  I watched my sons face start to fall and become serious.  I pictured myself taking away Santa and said, "...you like Grandpa huh?"

"Yeah."  And he smiled brightly.

"Umm... yeah, he's your Grandpa, so you're a little bit Italian."

"But why did you say no at first?"

"Because he was born here, in the US, and I was being overly technical.  But his parents are straight from Italy--so he's Italian, and that makes you a little bit Italian too."

He smiled wide again and said, "Cool!"

We'll save the discussion for divorce some other day.