Like many of my women friends with sons, I can get a little frustrated that people are always telling me not only that my son LOOKS just like my husband (does he?), but reminds them of my husband. In fact, my son reminds ME a lot of my husband. Evolutionarily speaking, they say this is a good thing. I know he’s my son. I pushed him out. I remember that day fairly well (despite the tiredness and natural pain-numbing opiates). But men don’t have it so easy. Of course when The Boy came out and we saw the squiggles of wet reddish hair, the midwife seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and said something to the effect that we knew whose son that was. (That moment must be rough on midwives when the father is present). Not that you can see any of that red-headedness these days. But I have a feeling it will show up again as he grows older.
Anyway, I guess it’s great that my son reminds me of my husband. I love my husband and he has many wonderful qualities (though my son shares the qualities—stubbornness for example—that can make me want to tear at my hair as well).
But it often leaves me wondering, Where am I in him?
On Thursday The Boy woke up as usual, ate his breakfast, then told me that he remembered seeing some people in Eugene wearing their shirts backward (this is entirely possible), and so had decided that this was the way he was going to wear his button-down shirts from now on. I asked him what he was going to say when people wanted to know why he was wearing his shirt that way. He said, “Because I want to.”
I’ve never been so proud.
So I buttoned up his shirt for him and packed him off to camp that way. Shirt backwards.
As soon as we arrived, one of his little friends, a five-year-old girl The Boy adores, came up and asked me why The Boy was wearing his shirt that way. I smiled and told her, “Because he wants to.” And thought: finally something of me in him.
And he kept it that way all day. It was backwards when we went to Occupational Therapy; it was backwards at the farmer’s market where we ran into several of his friends; it was backwards when he played with the neighbor kids from across the street. Backwards all day.
Thinking back, the first glimmer of seeing myself in him might have been when he preferred to wear mismatched socks, or when he insisted on my painting his toenails orange, green, and black. Just two days earlier a little boy at camp had asked me why The Boy’s toenails were painted if he was a boy. Then he informed me that painted toenails were for girls. I told him that anyone could paint their toenails. He looked at me like he was trying to decide whether everything he’d been taught by his caregivers (and society) was wrong, or I was crazy.
What was really encouraging about this whole adventure was that not only did The Boy have his own ideas about how he wanted to look, but he honestly didn’t seem to care what his peers thought or said.
Unfortunately, the next day he wore his shirt backward again, and got into a bunch of fights with the other kids who he said were, “Saying mean things.” He hit so many of them that he got kicked out of camp.
It’s a rough row to hoe this individuality thing.
To add even more insult to his injuries, when I went to pick him up at camp his shirt was on front wards. He was very upset about this and said the counselors MADE him strip down and put his shirt on the other way.
Just a week before his fourth Birthday, I guess I can say that not only is he developing into a real individual, but that his innocence and ignorance are over. He’s been firmly introduced to “The Way We Do Things Here” and the consequences of deviating from that norm.
And of course I’m left asking myself if it’s really such a good thing that my son reminds me of me.
July 4th at Park
