By Alicia
My 10–month-old is playing in the bath. I'm swirling little, plastic sea creatures in the water between his legs to keep him occupied when he discovers something much more interesting. Reaching beneath a little duckie that is floating by, my sweet, innocent boy spies his penis and begins pinching it lightly between his tiny thumbs and forefingers, a small frown of concentration changing into a tentative smile.
I notice his discovery and say in my sing-song mommy voice designed to telegraph interest and inspire curiosity, "What's that, honey? Did you find your pee-pee? Is that your pee-pee?"
This morning he did not recognize actual words and my voice was just the soundtrack to his life. But now my sweet, innocent, cherub-boy looks up at me and beams the most mischievous, maniacal, monkey grin that can be beamed with only two teeth. He is absolutely adorable in his utter delight. I say it again, more tentatively this time, "Pee-pee?" He beams back at me. My heart becomes heavier.
"And so it begins," I think.
When I told my mom about it later she snorted, "Men!"
"From the time they're eight months until they're 80!" she said.
Exactly.
That is exactly the problem. Something so important to him and I have no knowledge of it, nothing to offer in real experience about that part of his life. He'll be living a life of the male experience and I will simply watch, not having experienced it myself. This was the fear that flashed through my heart, spreading a sense of dread and anxiety in its wake, more than a year ago when the cheerful sonographer declared, "It's a boy!"
Throughout my entire pregnancy I was a mix of befuddlement and skepticism about my baby's gender. "What am I supposed to do with a boy?" I wondered. Out loud. Often.
Whenever someone asked if I knew the gender I would say almost pleadingly, hoping they could impart wisdom that would illuminate the path on which I was about to embark, "It's a boy. I'm having a boy. What do I do with a boy?" I said the word "boy" over and over, hoping it would sink in.
I mean, I know what women are like; I love being one and I love hanging out with them. I get girls. But a boy??? A boy meant hours of playing trains and smashing toy cars and, eventually, endless hours of video games and, heaven help me, the Three Stooges.
"Maybe he will be a boy with a really big feminine side," I reassured myself hopefully.
He's been warning me this may not be the case, though. At five months old he started bouncing up and down whenever we got near anything that lit up or blipped and the only thing he would "eat" at first was a cell phone or the remote control (the real one, how do they know?). Love of gadgets? Male.
At Christmas, he rejected blocks, a musical train, and an animated shape sorter all for the junior version of whack-a-mole. Instead of electronics, his new-found obsession is hammering four-colored balls into their respective holes. He loves this game beyond all reason, practicing whacking like it was a religion; sometimes bashing away randomly in the general direction of the toy and sometimes methodically pummeling the same ball until it succumbs and drops into the hole. Pointless smashing? Very male.
A tiny pang of disappointment hit me as I first watched him pound away at the balls. I was happy to see his enthusiasm and growing dexterity, but he was a boy, after all, and I would only be able to guide him so far before he would continue down a road that I do not travel.
And that was the moment I faced when he was playing in the tub. Although he didn't know it, that was the first time I couldn't really, viscerally share his experience with him. The most I could do was smile and wish him luck, "Yep, that's your pee-pee, love. I don't know what to tell you about it, really... You can ask your daddy, he can tell you all about it."
I sat by the tub, feeling alienated from my baby for the first time since he's been born.
After a few moments he held up his chubby arms, signaling to be picked up. I scooped him up and he smiled his delight that I understood what he wanted. His arms went around my neck, holding me in a hug. My heart melted because it felt so right. "He's my boy," I thought. Suddenly playing with cars and watching the Three Stooges seemed to make perfect sense.
Alicia and her family live in Vermont.
The first time my little guy did that in the tub (he's now 22 months old) I JUMPED on the toilet training bandwagon! "Yes, that's your penis, that's where the pipi comes out".
I guess we just have to grin and bear it.
Posted by: CL | February 14, 2007 at 05:32 PM
that's funny. it's so different for me. i have lived with my nephew since he was born, and i never interpreted any behavior as especially "male" or "female". i think it's helped me see things they explore as part of various stages or individual preferences according to personality, not as dependent on their gender. i think the more we assign something to a gender (lots of little baby girls,like my daughter, love gadgets and smashing just as much), the more likely we are to unconsciously reinforce those strict differences and send messages to our kids about what's ok and what's not. i try not to push any particular toys or activities but find my daughter gravitates to trains just as much as my nephew, and he loves her dolls and trying on her pretty dancing shoes. It seems to me more like normal toddler exploration than anything having to do with their gender.
Posted by: wwwmama | February 14, 2007 at 02:12 PM
At times, I also feel a little alienated from my two boys with their Hot Wheels, football, etc., but what can I do? Try to understand as much as possible and then get down on the floor and play with them. In the process, I've discovered that I have a pretty good arm for throwing a football. LOL!
Posted by: Karen | February 12, 2007 at 01:48 PM
in a post whose first few paragraphs are about a boy finding his penis for the first time, the line "A tiny pang of disappointment hit me as I first watched him pound away at the balls" cracked me up! Lol.
Posted by: surviving motherhood | February 12, 2007 at 01:33 PM