Kids & Parenting

---

I need to be totally frank right now, perhaps a bit graphic. So, weak-stomached, easily shocked people may need to skip over this. Triggering traumatic memories is not my intention. This subject needs to be addressed, though, as an attempt at healing. We all know what I’m talking about so I won’t beat around the bush. I am going to discuss raising a boy child.
I stumbled into the bathroom in the dead dark of 3:00 a.m. My equilibrium was still sleeping comfortably in bed, so the trip to the bathroom was one of a drunken person weaving in an attempt to walk a straight line. My eyes had to be held open by my fingers, as the eyelids were like vises, refusing to separate from their bottom-of–the-eye counterparts. My brain was sending out messages of depersonalization, stating, “This is not really you. You are in bed, completely and blissfully visiting the wonderful land of nod.”
Then the unthinkable occurred. The fog was instantly swept away and I was horrifyingly awake. It is painful to say this, but I need closure, so here goes. I sat directly on a puddle of my son’s urine. The trauma and shock are still felt. I don’t know if violated is too strong of a word.
After much therapy, I can say that I only have flashbacks a couple of times a week. I am as healed as I’ll ever be, the experts tell me. An issue was glaringly brought forth by this episode, though. How can I raise a child of such an alien gender?
When I was pregnant with him, I dreamed of having a girl. I wanted a girl because, well, I’m a girl. I didn’t care so much about the frilly stuff. I wanted a girl to indoctrinate into the cult of “we are women, hear us roar”. I wanted to begin again and use this baby as my second chance at strong womanhood.

My child was protected from my selfish desires by becoming a he instead of a she. I have said before that God has a sense of humor. I grimly reminded myself of this as I washed my face one day. My precious baby boy had just rained his pee down on me when I changed his diaper. I also decided at that moment that my sense of humor didn’t get the joke.
As I write this, my five-year-old son is chasing the cat, screaming. When I ask him why he is screaming and running after Lizzie, he smiles and says it is fun. Our affectionate, friendly cat runs faster than a cheetah chasing a gazelle when she sees our boy approaching.
I never know how I will find the half boy, half monkey when I enter a room looking for him. Usually he is hanging upside down but I have also caught him on top of cupboards, in cupboards, or on top of major appliances.
Lately, he has been very interested in his maleness. He has many questions about his genitalia that he seems to ask when daddy is nowhere to be found. I am perfecting the baton pass by saying, “ask your father, he’s a boy, too.” Thus far, he accepts the answer. I don’t know how much longer I can hold him off.
He was in the bathtub one time when he was about three. He suddenly panicked and yelled that his, you know, was getting bigger. (By the way, we try to use anatomically correct words, but I never matured enough to be able to say them without giggling). At that moment, the gravity of the situation hit me. I had birthed a boy. I could not continue in my denial of his possession of an appendage. It would be an integral part of what he did and who he was. I needed to face this issue head on and matter-of-factly. Thus, I reassured him this was not a permanent situation. He was appeased. Unfortunately, I was so successful that he decided he liked this nifty trick and should do it again. I decided to enter back into denial as quickly as I had left it a moment earlier.
Recently I was cleaning his room. I do believe it should be his job, but when tornadoes hit, extreme measures need to be taken to save it from complete destruction. I picked up a test tube off the floor of his closet. It originally was from a science experiment that we had completed, but now he used it as a prop in various death and mayhem stories he liked to create. As I picked it up, a liquid splashed out of it and over me. Some even got on my face. I’ll just say it. There’s no way to beat around the bush. It was urine.
After a month of padded cells and high doses of tranquilizers, I have recovered. (Though I do drop to the ground in a fetal position when I see the color yellow). He has explained to me that it was just because his “leg hurt and I didn’t want to walk all the way to the bathroom”. This makes sense. After all, the bathroom is located a long two-foot wide hallway across from his room. And though jumping from his bed railing out into the hallway did not affect his hurt leg, it is completely reasonable to assume that walking that long treacherous two-foot wide hallway was out of the question.
Do you see how raising a boy entails coming into contact with a lot more urine than I had expected in my life? When dreaming of a family, biohazard waste was not a huge consideration. I knew there would be diapers to change and I was prepared for that. Sitting in urine, being sprayed with urine, spilling urine on myself out of a test tube; these were the surprises that were to bless me because I birthed a boy.
These are just the surface issues. If it were only that he would introduce me to a life of increased awareness of body fluids, I would not complain. This is not the case. There is much, much more.
He caught sight of me yesterday as I picked him up from a friend’s house. His way of showing his affection was to run over and attempt to karate kick me in the rear. This is akin, I believe, to the slapping of the derriere that we see displayed in all sports events where men participate. How can I retrain what is obviously encoded in the male gene?
He enjoys violence and destruction and likes to act these themes out with his myriad of action figures. No one is alive at the end of his dramas. He is an equal opportunity destroyer. The good guys and the bad guys all bite the dust. He then asks me what part of the story I liked best. He wants explicit details, such as “Spiderman’s head getting blown off” or “when the airplane crashed into the bad guy and his legs came off”. If I don’t give an answer, he is happy to supply me with one and reenact it to refresh my memory.
I wonder if boys are born with the “knowledge” that housework is women’s work. One day my husband and son were playing together and had made quite a mini-disaster area of blocks and action figures. My husband told my son that it was time to clean up. At that time my son matter-of-factly suggested, “Daddy, we don’t have to do that. Mommy will do it.” Do you understand now why I submit that raising a boy may be perilous to the health of women? My blood pressure has not yet come down off the roof.
Why would any woman choose this perilous and messy job? I know why I did. First, I did not have a choice. One fateful August night, I delivered a baby boy. I could not send him back. Besides, he was kind of cute.
There is another reason that I will admit to here. If you quote me, I’ll deny it vehemently, as I love to appear the martyr when discussing my son’s exploits. It is quite simply that I adore my boy. I adore everything about him. I adore the exasperating times because they make the best stories (and I love stories). I adore the messy times, because he brings life to this house. I adore, well no, I don’t adore the urine, but it too makes a great story. I do adore his face, his energy, his laugh, his questions, and his attempts to figure out life. I adore that he adores me. I adore that he says to me “mommy, you’re not cool, only boys can be cool. But, you are pretty”. (I should lecture him on sexism, but I am still basking in the glow of being pretty to him).
Quite simply, this boy-child has been an incredible gift from the God who promises to put us in families. He is a gift of zest and passion and life. I need to remind myself of this the next time I sit down on the toilet and, well, you know.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE