Playing in the Rain

When I was kid, I thought of myself as a tomboy. I'm not sure how much of that was real and how much was the feminist principles I adopted before I could spell the word feminist. Despite my self-labeling, "tomboy" didn't really describe me. I've always liked pink, and the first bicycle that was truly mine was pink with white tires and a white seat. It bothered me when the white tires got brownish through wear. On the other hand, some girly stuff drove me nuts as a kid. I hated Barbie. I just didn't really get the point of her. (Although, I did love the cardboard three-story Barbie mansion my dad got for me and my sister at a yard sale, mostly because it had this awesome plastic elevator that really went up and down). I can't remember a time when dress up was something I had a burning need to take part in. I thought She-Ra was dumb, and I loved He-Man. (To be honest, that was just because of the linguistic geekery that plagued me even as a child. If He-Man was the original, and he had a female counterpart, shouldn't her name be She-Woman? Or at least She-Femme? Or something? Ra was a meaningless syllable that did not connote any power whatsoever. And, because I'm somewhat black and white in my thinking, the lack of a reasonable name for She-Ra doomed her to the back of my closet for all eternity. She just did not pass the linguistic coolness test.)

I suspect wasn't truly a tomboy, I was just quirky. Since I liked the idea of not fitting in but still being within previously set parameters (I do love a good precedent), I thought of myself as a tomboy. It was the most accurate label I could come up with.

I've been thinking about this a great deal since we found out that LO was a boy. I've been paying attention to how little boys play and interact with each other, wondering if I'll know how to play "right." Yesterday, three little boys were outside of the library, delighted to see a deluge of rain water dripping from a poorly placed gutter on the roof. The rain had stopped, but the roof just kept delivering more and more water. The boys hesitantly put their heads under the spray, flicked their hands through the water, surrounded it, wondering what further scientific experiments they could conduct. Their mothers were talking at the front door to the library, and one admonished them. "Boys, you don't know what that water is going through up on the roof. And now it's all over your heads! Yuck!"

I felt like a cultural anthropologist. First, I wondered if I was going to be the germ-a-phobe mom who stops the watch-the-rain game. Then I wondered if I really got what the boys were doing. Would three little girls of the same age (somewhere between 7 and 9) have been as fascinated by the water? Would I have been?

When we told J's best friend that we were expecting a boy, his response surprised us. He said he was jealous. I have been thinking that perhaps it has to do with the feeling of affinity with a same sex child. Even if I didn't play tea party and princesses and dress up when I was a girl, I know how to fake it. What if LO has a world from which I'm excluded? Not that I can't fake rockets and dinosaurs--and how many dads do you see enjoying themselves with their ultra-girly daughters? But on a basic level, will I ever really understand the fascination of a torrent of water coming off a library roof?

I feel like I'm about to be initiated into a world that has, thus far, been alien to me. That of little boy-hood. I hope I like it. I hope I fit in. I hope that, even if I don't understand it, that I can have fun. I hope my kid is a little quirky.