How I Wonder What You Are

 My son, the blond bruiser we still call the baby, isn't a baby anymore. He's 19 months old, a toddler, all rough and tumble, "all boy," they say, which confounds me even as it does seem to be true. 

As the mother of two girls, I'd always cringe when people who didn't even know my children would talk about drama and difficulty associated with raising girls. It's so stereotypical and generalized. It wasn't reflective of me as a girl or a woman, and it annoyed me that they were painting my daughters into the corner that was so critical and unrelated to my experience. And yet. In the case of my daughters, it actually seems to have some merit. 

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Whereas our elder daughter has been practicing her splits all summer in anticipation of becoming a prima ballerina this fall and our younger daughter has been practicing her kicks for her upcoming (and voluntary) involvement in "kwae tron do," there is a lot about both that lands them in the typical "girl" category. They both love princess dresses and sparkly shoes; they both love playing Mommy and school; they both are prone to irrational, emotional, immediate and prolonged dramatic outbursts when things don't go their way. They are unlike the way I remember being at their ages.

But still I prickle at all the generalizing, because it oversimplifies them. They, like most people, I guess, are wonderfully complex. They both love learning all they can about animals and the Bible (though it annoys them that so few girls are featured prominently in it), they love getting lost in music and books and imaginative play in the worlds of their own creation. Recently they've begun "exploring" in which they comb parts of a field or park, away from the playground equipment, for "evidence of aliens." Their daddy is hard at work on a spectacular clubhouse situated a bit too high for my liking and outside our bedroom window. They are already conspiring about the adventures they will have there in the nonsensically named "Double M and Em club" (Double stands for Deacon, they say, M for Mirabella and Em for Emerie). My heart smiles as I picture years of secret meetings in that house. 

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One of my daughters wants to be a cashier at Target, where she will make the money she will save to fund her trips around the world as an explorer. "When I run out of money," she reasons, "I will come home to visit you and work some more at Target." The other wants to be an orthopedist and an inventor and an artist. Both want to be mommies. And I say, of course, that they can be anything they want to be, and I mean it, all the while knowing what I really mean is you can be anything you want to be, just maybe not all at the same time. There will be time for that lesson. At five and seven, this is not the time for rationalizing dreams or deeming them impractical.

So when I say the comments from strangers and friends and family alike about how different a boy would be-- simply because he is a boy-- irritated me, I guess it's because it all sounded like more of the same. I found myself defending his right to be whoever he wanted to be before he even got here. There were newborn sleepers with football and "all star" references on them. Comments about how everything had to be gotten rid of and replaced because so much of it was pink; as if drinking from a pink sippy cup would scar him for life. "Get ready," they'd say, "you don't know what's coming." I scoffed at all of it. I still do.

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But here's the thing: In this case, a lot of it is actually true. My son is different from my daughters in nearly every way. His body type is thick and solid to their slight and petite. His features are round to their angular. He has at his disposal toys from both ridiculous gender categories: dolls and books and blocks and balls and cars and he always gravitates to the balls and cars. If he is awake, he is running, not infrequently into walls or off ledges he should have seen coming. He climbs on top of furniture-- storage pieces and the kitchen table, chairs and the couch. He seems to see life and its physical obstacles (usually set in place by his mother) as a challenge he can't wait to accept. He requires a bath every day, where his sisters just didn't-- even if we haven't gone anywhere that day. The boy wakes up, after being bathed right before bed, with stinky feet. I don't even understand it.

But for as rough and wild as he is, he is every bit as affectionate. He sleeps with a teddy bear in a choke hold that he calls his "baby." He throws his body at me in a bear hug, in the middle of his play time, just because. At any moment, if there is music, he might hold up his arms and say, "Mama! Dance!" He wraps his chubby self around me when it's time to sleep, one arm wound around my neck with his face turned in toward mine and demands that I "sing." 

"Sunshine?" I ask.

"No, no," he replies, "inkle inkle." If I take too long getting started, he pulls back and holds his big puppy paws in the air, opening and closing them and bobbing his head while repeating, "inkle inkle." 

He settles his head back down on my chest as I begin to sing, "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are."

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I am so grateful for these children, so complex, so gorgeously themselves, so beautifully independent from each other and yet, so very much a part of each other, their father and me. Every day they are teaching me, every day I am astounded at how much of themselves seems to have been there from the start. I pray that I wouldn't miss it, wouldn't over correct it, would really see them and support all that they are, all they are becoming, and their right and freedom and space to do it, when it fits into what our culture deems appropriate for their gender, but especially when it doesn't. 

I lament the lightning speed with which they are growing, even as I can hardly wait to see who they will become. 

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