This morning I looked up a piece I wrote back when all three boys were at Crossfield Elementary School, so they must have been around 7, 10 and 11 years old. I go back to this piece when I call into question my sanity at spending so much time with my kids. I called it "In Defense of Boys," because at the time I was finding myself constantly having to explain away "rough" behavior to my neighbors who (as it so happened) were mothers of girls. Needless to say, it turned into a love story.
Here it is, if you haven't stopped reading yet:
I am the mother of three boys. I am many other things as well: tall, brunette, a runner, a sister, daughter, wife – the list goes on. But it’s the boys in my life - the boy stuff, the boy energy, that boy halo that hovers and sparkles above me that defines me right now.
My manicurist shakes her head, “You should have had girls,” she chides me in her broken English. “Boys not take good care of mothers. You should have had girls.”
“I know,” I say to her in apology, “I wanted girls, but I only got boys.”
“You should have had girls,” she reminds me again, “girls much better than boys.”
The day that I gave birth to my third, precious little ten pound bundle of testosterone in a Connecticut hospital was the day that I gave up any illusions of living in a girl world. Ripped from me that day were visions of Laura Ashley dresses, a complete Fisher Price kitchen set and a shopping companion for life. No dolls, no fine printed floral wallpaper, no hand-painted furniture or sheer lace curtains would find their way up my stairway.
After my third son was born, a friend told me: “If you’d only had a girl, I would have bought her a darling little outfit.” No darling little outfits for me, mother of boys.
My visions led me that August morning, not down a lane of dance lessons and wedding gowns but rather down a rockier road: through hallways filled with soccer shoes and baseball gloves, tennis rackets, basketballs and football helmets. I saw my laundry baskets overflowing with blue jeans and T-shirts and mismatched socks in varying degrees of white. I saw my family room stocked with Legos, train sets, action figures and Matchbox cars.
I heard my evening meals, loud and sparkling, filled with burping and laughing, inane joke telling, chairs tipping and outrageous stories retold from cartoon shows and video games. I could hear myself saying things like “Don’t wipe your hands on the tablecloth,” and the boy mom classic: “Do not stuff more than one roll into that mouth at a time.”
I saw my dinner table: linen napkins skillfully dunked into crystal water goblets, vegetables and rice strewn about in attempts to forage only red meat, and me standing above the fray in white apron and sensible shoes demanding civility and good manners in the face of that great and ultimately unsurpassable odd: boys at mealtime.
I saw friendships bringing even more boys into my home, entertaining wild energies on summer afternoons, after school playmates on rainy days and sleepovers with smelly sleeping bags tossed about my best carpets. I could hear the door slam back into it’s frame as three boys returned from a Boy Scout meeting. I saw a succession of prom nights, cars screeching out of my driveway, bouquets to order, tuxedoes and broken hearts to mend.
I’m actually surprised that as I raise my children from babies to boys and towards manhood that the visions of my life were so accurate. I’m equally surprised that the front door is still standing. My boys are loud and they resist showers and teeth brushing. Their lives are full of football and basketball and friends and video games and pizza.
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But even more surprising to me is that it is all good. The boy stuff – the door slamming, the smelly socks, the horrific table manners, the unkept rooms - it is what it is. Sometimes I need to dig very, very deep to see their tenderness, their sense of humor and their loveliness. But, because I'm their mother and have spent many, many, many hours with them, I know that some day, when I am not looking, they will take their elbows off of the table.
