Sons

When I found out--twice--I was having boys, I freaked out. I am an only child, and had been a fairly quiet, very obedient, bookish girl. I had some boys as friends in childhood, but mostly they were boys who weren't testosterone-driven demons.

In some ways I am a tomboy. I am definitely not a girlie girl. My makeup skills are cursory. I do go to the salon to help manage things and get pedicures a couple times a month, but that's pretty much it. Sometimes a nice soak in the tub is great, but I don't think I've done that in at least three years, either.

Anyway, I must admit that I am befuddled, and probably will remain befuddled, by ways in which boys and men communicate with each other through deafening silence or through physical contact, preferably of the violent variety that involves sending bodies crashing through the air. I hear it's normal, but it is still foreign to me.

As my father (who really wanted a girl) said to me today, I failed in giving him two grandsons. I told him to blame my husband for the gender malfunction. My father is teasing me, of course; he loves my boys wholeheartedly although they have been among the chosen few able to make my placid father truly angry, and incidents that bore that mark were very rare, indeed. I can recall perhaps two or three times in my childhood that my father raised his voice to me. Well, the boys have already surpassed that from him, long ago. His "look,"  which withered me, does NOTHING to them.

So basically I am screwed. I am learning, they are learning, but I remember the refrain of one of my mother's friends (a mother of three boys) who would quietly lament the absence of scholars and gentlemen from her brood. She got Marines with death wishes. I would like to imagine that one day my two will  be scholars and gentlemen, but more likely Callum will be a political and/or high powered lawyer and end up like Eliot Spitzer for thinking that the rules don't apply to him, and Tobey will be some rugged professional football player who will cry about cruelty to animals but be murderous with anyone  who tries to ask him what he's feeling inside about anything else. Particularly anything personal.

We will see! I am sure it will be an adventure. And I love them with all I've got.