My son Arie has been very focused on penises lately. As he is learning to use the toilet, discussions of this singular body part have been animated and numerous.
"Daddy goes pee-pee with his penis?" Arie asks me. Yes. "Éiden goes pee-pee with his penis?" Yes. "Frodo-dog?" Yes. "Kitties?" Yes. "Mommy?" No.
When Arie first absorbed this information, he became solemn. I do not judge you, his expression told me. I will always love you despite your hideous deformity.
Now, as a woman up to my eyeballs in males—even the pets—I often face a mirror image of the exasperating question my father answered so often: "All girls? Too bad. Are you trying for a boy next?"
(Speaking of exasperating questions: do not ask a toddler recently yanked from his position at the center of the universe: "How do you like your baby brother?" This is no more appropriate than asking a woman brightly: "How do you like your husband's mistress? Don't you think she's cute? You were just as adorable at her age.")
My father responded to the gender question with varying degrees of irritation, and always steadfast denial. Despite this, each time someone asked, I became more hurt and angry. Much of this was how folks brought it up: "Four girls! Better stock up on shotgun shells," or: "So many kids and no one to help in the shop," or the ever popular: "Oh, no! Four girls to marry off!" Heh. Heh heh.
In the 1970s, before "Girl Power" became a co-opted catch phrase hot glued on inappropriately tight pink T-shirts, I got awfully tired of hearing that I was not good enough, smart enough, or strong enough. But I thrilled with pride when my father set people straight. I proudly worked very hard on our farm, as did my sisters, and threw myself just as vigorously into ballet lessons. Our parents taught us to stick together and stick up for each other, to speak up for ourselves and not to take any guff. We were girls and we were just as good as any boy. Better.
So, the first time I was pregnant, I didn't mind folks assuming that I would prefer a girl. When I imagined my child, I knew she would be a girl. I would, as my parents did for me, help her to fight sexism while celebrating her own unique self.
Then, I had a boy. And I was head over heels.
"I'm sure you'll have a girl next time," several women consoled me, as if I'd unexpectedly given birth to a penguin. And then when I got pregnant again: "Trying for a girl this time, are you?"
I hope these continuing questions won't hurt my sons as they did me. I'll bet they won't. They are not growing up in a place where people try to insult and goad girls by calling them boys, after all.
And they will never wonder if Mom would have preferred someone else more like her. Until I had my own boys, I wondered this sometimes about my father. Wouldn't he have wanted someone he could relate to more directly? But I am enough like him to know the truth, now: my admiration for my boys is directly tied to my wonder at discovering the unknown world of boyhood. Perhaps Arie would be just as smart, kind, mechanical, noisy, stubborn, vigorous, and swaggering were he a girl. Maybe Éiden would be just as outgoing, cheerful, and charming. I don't know and I don't care. What I do know is this: when someone recently told me, "Arie has so much male energy," I beamed with pride.
The day before I birthed Éiden, our family went swimming. A woman came to the beach with her teenage son, with whom she was noticeably at great ease. Noticing my swollen belly, she followed my gaze up the beach at my son toddling along the water's edge: collecting rocks in his serious, focused way. She saw my expression.
What she said was a delicious shock: "Hoping for another boy?"
I started to deny it.
She leaned forward conspiratorially, another mother of boys. "It's okay," she said, smiling. "You can admit it."
I'd have been thrilled either way, but there really is something very special about having two boys, especially to me. Like my father, I am utterly delighted to be so completely out of my element. And the way I say "my sons" reminds me of someone else when he said "my daughters."
Haddayr Copley-Woods is a writer and graphic designer who lives and works in Minneapolis' Powderhorn Park neighborhood.
