Boys to Men (and Girls to Women)

People often ask if I notice big differences in raising a boy after two girls. There are small differences. I clean the bathrooms—particularly the area right around the toilet—more often now that Ben is no longer in diapers, for example (and am told this will just get worse as he gets older and invites his little boy friends over). Or the other day, I was talking with my mom when Ben just reached up with one of his many plastic Dora dolls and hit me on the cheek with it. My mom remarked that it was such a boy thing for him to do. I suppose she’s right. The girls will hit and push, but only in moments of intense anger. A few months ago, my level-headed Leah bit Meg so hard she left a bruise. I don’t recall Meg’s offense—certainly nothing deserving a bite, and we punished Leah—but at least there was an offense that spurred the biting. Ben will push, hit or bite just for the heck of it, to get a reaction, and often with a smile on his face.

Back in 2005, when my 16-week ultrasound revealed I was having a boy, the first thing my friend Carol (the mother of one girl and one boy) said to me was, “I’m so happy you’ll get to experience having a boy. You’ll see…he will adore you in a way your girls don’t.” She was absolutely right. All three of my kids are fiercely attached to me; none of them have ever, at least not yet, gone through a “daddy” phase where they prefer Daniel to me. But more than the girls, Ben just can’t get enough of me.

My days are caught up in smallness, my energy consumed by crumbs and spills and damp piles of clothes, my goals limited to timely arrival at the bus stop, something warm on the table each evening, and clean hair settling onto clean-enough pillow cases. A little adoration can go a long way toward reminding me why I do it all. We pile onto the bed for stories and Ben pats the place next to him: “I scootched over Mom, so you can come sit right here.” At library story hour, he moves up to sit by the librarian, so he can see the book better, but steals frequent glances back at me. When the stories are done, he runs to me and leaps into the tiny space made by my crossed legs, snuggles his head into my chest, waits for me to fold my arms around him so he is completely encased by my limbs.

It can become too much for me, of course. Every separation—even for a nap, where I am the one to tuck him in before he sleeps and greet him when he awakes—is an ordeal requiring many reassurances, hugs and kisses, often tears. I am considering joining the healing prayer team at our church; my only hesitation is that the need for me to arrive at church a few minutes early and occasionally stay for a short meeting after would require Ben to separate from me at times when he is unused to doing so, and these separations can leave me so weary that I’m not sure they are worth it.

Perhaps it is the extremity of Ben’s attachment to me, or that he is the only boy or maybe just that he is the youngest—but I am most aware with Ben of the looming, more lasting separation that is bound to happen as my children grow into teenagers and adults. As I hold his hand, all gentle curves and warm skin, I think of how one day his hand will be calloused and hairy, and how he will certainly have no interest in putting it into mine. The thought of Ben as a teenager, all knobby joints and bobbing Adam’s apple, his hooded eyes seeing the world so differently than I do, terrifies me. I have no idea what sort of relationship I can have with such a creature, no idea what will remain then of the squirmy bundle of plump flesh who crawls into our bed most mornings, pops his thumb into his mouth and digs his feet into my side.

It is perhaps naïve of me to be less terrified of what will become of me and my daughters as they grow. Separation and misunderstanding between mothers and daughters is legendary; certainly we will not be immune. I suppose I believe, maybe mistakenly, that at least I will understand something of who and what they are, because we are all women, even in those times when they are utterly convinced that I understand nothing.

At a healing prayer workshop I attended yesterday, a woman in my group requested prayer for her son, who is going through a divorce and carrying a great deal of bitterness, toward his ex-wife and toward all women. When it was my turn to make a prayer request, I kept it simple. I just want to be able to pray, period, a task that I have always struggled with, but particularly now when my children’s needs are always getting in the way, either in the form of a child him- or herself needing something just as I’ve gone into my room and closed the door, or in the form of my never-ending to-do list. After the group prayed for me, the woman whose son is divorcing said, “I know it seems so hard, but this is the best time, when they are little.”

Mothers of young children hear some version of this woman’s wistful (envious?) observation regularly: “This is the best time, when they are little.” Older mothers remind us to enjoy it, that it goes so fast, that you will look back on this time fondly. We know they are right, that in spite of the tedium and mess and fatigue, we are privileged beyond measure to be so completely needed by, so utterly attached to and so wholeheartedly in love with—and loved by—our children.

Knowing that I am privileged, I try to notice, to appreciate, to remember. Yes, the days become a blur of repetition and routine, but I try to stop and take it in—the way their toes line up like perfect pink pearls; the way Ben laughs from deep in his belly and makes a sound so un-self-conscious, so naturally buoyant, that you can’t help but laugh with him; the way Leah, always thin and petite, is losing her minimal little-girl curves and becoming all angular, complete with a bump on her nose just like mine; the way Meg methodically tucks her baby doll Rebecca under a wee pink blanket in bed each night, before asking me to pull the covers up over both of them.

I notice, I appreciate, I remember as much as I can, but still time marches on. No amount of remembering—the daily effort to take note, the albums of photos, these blog posts, the telling of “I remember when you were a baby,” stories over supper—will keep them from growing into people I both know intimately and don’t recognize. If I am very, very lucky, my losses will be like those of my prayer partner yesterday, the loss of seeing my children hurt by other people, hurting other people, making decisions I don’t agree with, going in directions I would not choose for them. Such losses are real and painful, but take place within a relationship that is still there, still vital, still important. If I am very, very lucky, I will have years ahead in which to know these people my children will become, learn from them, forgive and be forgiven by them, and to love them with a kind of love that is different from, but rooted in, the physically demanding, breathtaking, all-knowing, consuming love I have for them today.