Friday, March 21, 2014

The Making of a Man



 It's officially spring and the weather is appropriately bipolar.  Today it's 45 degrees and when the sun appears life is glorious.  Thisbe runs with her coat unzipped, her hands holding the front corners open like wings.  When the sun is out the eye moves to the patches of grass, to the glint of light on the rivulets in the gutters.  Each inch of dry pavement is beheld with glee, each naked finger an act of grace.  And then the clouds come and it's still 45 but instead the wind finds the corners of the lighter coat, slides inside the cuffs and chills.  Gray stipples the hulks of snow and the grass is dun, the trees still skeletal.  No wonder it is the time of year where we remember death on Friday and resurrection on Sunday.

You are in full force darling baby mode and we dote on you continually.  You have two teeth making their slow slice through the lower gum line and you devour slurries of prunes and apples and peas and mangoes and kale with a variety of enthusiastic grunts.  You're an expert at sitting and blowing raspberries but you still fail to roll or make consonant sounds.  Crawling is a distant continent.  But as long as you have a full stomach you are generally a happy boy, content fingering backpack straps or testing the texture of a jar lid with your tongue.


You are far more sensitive than your sister.  If your father sings too low a note or bangs a rhythm on the kitchen table too loudly your face crumples in distress.  If you're left alone in a room or (lately) taken away from me you squeal unhappily.  But your sensitivity to sound has also proved useful.  Though we've now weaned you of night feedings (can I get a "Hallelu--" oh, wait.  maybe not so much during Lent) you still sometimes wake at 5:00 or so.  Then Dada goes in and turns on a classical lullaby CD and within a few minutes you sway back into sleep.

But this sensitivity in you, this part of who you are and who you are becoming--well, it's the first time I've really had to face that I (and others) think of you in a gendered way.  Specifically as a boy and thus as someone for whom being highly sensitive might prove to be a problem in the future.  If you were a girl, our culture would chalk all this behavior up as "shy" and "sweet" and well within the realm of the ways girls should behave.  But each time I hear you cry at a loud sound or buckle at my absence I am torn between deep love at the emergence of this part of your personality and worry that the culture you live in will view this behavior as weakness rather than as strength.

Your sister, meanwhile, faces a similar problem.  Teacher Sarah had to tell me at our very first conference that I shouldn't use "bossy" to describe my daughter--that she was showing leadership skills and though she needed to learn to manage these skills, they were nothing to roll my eyes or shake my head in embarrassment about.  Indeed, there's even a campaign rolling through the internet right now called "Ban Bossy"--Sheryl Sandberg's attempt to promote leadership in girls.  Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) I worry way less about Thisbe's fierce, intense, and strident personality than I do about your more attached, sensitive, and observant one.


And I wonder (and I'm going to try to say this without weirding you out too much) if it's more complicated with you because I have both a practical/rational version of what makes a wonderful man and then I have a biological/sexual version that stems from my own experience as a woman.  The first, much more PC version is all about sensitivity and kindness and compassion and intelligence.  That version of myself cares not a whit if you excel at athletics or know how to wield a hammer.  PC me is glad to buy you a doll to cradle and muffin tins to fill, glad to paint your toenails purple and purchase princess paraphernalia for Halloween.  But then there's the Un-PC me who, truthfully, has never been attracted to a man who was my height or shorter, who likes watching a man's body kick or throw or race shirtless down St. Olaf avenue, who is turned on by authority and strength.  And maybe un-PC me is just a product of social conditioning.  But maybe un-PC me is a product of biology too.  (If I wasn't lazy I would link to a bunch of articles that suggest this hypothesis).

I have no qualms about raising Thisbe to be intense and sassy and bossy--I mean AS A LEADER , in part because shunning some of the feminine "virtues" has worked pretty well for me.  I am all of those things and though there have admittedly been a number of romantic dry spells in my life--I've loved and been loved by incredible men (most notably your father, of course). 

But the bespeckled, soft-spoken, spongy, overly-sensitive guy?  I was never attracted to that guy.  He was always the friend I tried to set up with a single female friend...right before both the friend and I chose instead to date the inappropriate guys who couldn't speak in complete sentences but ran ultra-marathons.  Obviously with your father I managed to find a wonderful combination of both sensitivity and strength, of typical masculinity and the ability to listen without being an asshole.   And I hope for that combination within you--though I think it's unfair for me to hope for anything at all.  I'm called to love you for who you actually are not who I think you should become.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry if I fail you on this front.  It's so easy to blame OUR HORRIBLE SEXIST CULTURE for pushing kids to be something they're not.  It feels decidedly more unsettling to realize that my own biology and identity as a heterosexual and sexual being might get wrapped up in how I raise you, in the subtle ways I reaffirm or question your behavior.  It feels, in fact, like Freud is gleefully haunting the edges of this post.

In this season of little deaths, I would like to practice burying the expectations I have for you that come from a place other than complete love and grace.  Those that come from my insecurities or cultural pressure or those that are weirdly entangled in my own sexual psyche. 

Birth is, in part, the act of catching the being as he or she emerges.  And this is the great blessing, of course: that you are mystery and so the act of catching is repeated each day, our hands open and trembling to receive your screaming, messy, beautiful life in whatever shape it comes.




  


3 comments:

  1. gorgeous gorgeous post. a dear friend sent me here because she knew i would love it. she was right. i love deep textured writing, i love excruciatingly attentive observations, i love a mama who writes from the depths of her heart. thank you stacey for sending me here, thank you for being here.

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  2. hey k, i enjoy reading your entries--and you inspired me to start my own blog--thank you! this is a complicated post that got me thinking about a lot of things. like the times (yes, plural) that my dad told me i'd never find anyone who would love me the way i am--that i should change to be how he wanted me to be (namely, his servant to cook, clean and worship him--i.e., a "girl" or "woman"). i was going to say, i was a pre-teen for some of these speeches, and maybe... nope, no one deserves to hear that, ever. i was also thinking of, because you know me and pop culture, the theme of moulin rouge: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." it took me awhile to learn how--had to on my own--but, flash forward, things worked out rather well. i have no advice and no idea how difficult it must be to be a parent, but i know you and i know how much love you have to offer your incredibly gorgeous children--who will grow and continue the cycle of loving and being loved in return. because, love.

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  3. Thanks so much for these comments, Barbara and HRD! Your kindness truly makes my day.

    Barbara, thank you for being here. I feel honored that you're interested.

    HRD--I can't tell who you are! I'm totally stumped! Blogger won't tell me. Please confess! :) And, if you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to know how to find your blog.

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