I have several irrational fears: falling forward and breaking my teeth, colliding with a car on a three lane road {like I seriously believe the cars are veering toward me}, and feeling like I have B.O. all the time {now’s the time to tell me if this is, indeed, because I do have this}. These fears are things that my wild mind has cooked up, that I fixate on with no resolution in sight, that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t remove from my tiny little brain. And, the newest addition to this list is losing my son. I feel as though I must immediately explain myself … this is not meant to be in the sense of true loss {and I would of course, never want to compare my hyperbolic fear to true loss}.
Currently, Adam and I are the proud and lucky auntie and uncle to 8 nephews. If you were wondering if I left out the nieces, you are sorely mistaken. Those, I have none. No nieces. Not one little crazy, giggly girl in the mix of the ramubunctious frenzy of boys. And, this is quite okay with me — for the most part. The boys love to play together. I know how to change diapers without question {less crevices to work around, less places for the poop to go}. Gift buying is pretty simple {cars, balls, books, easy peasy}. And, we are fairly void of the color pink {although not 100%, it is 2010 and Barrett has great coloring for pink}. Whether Adam and I are blessed with only Barrett or a gaggle of guys, we are good with boys. And I suppose this is good, because with each new nephew, I believe more and more that we are only capable of producing members of generation XY.
There are a lot of pros of having only bros … they can all wear the same clothes, I don’t have to spend hours brushing out tangled locks, we don’t have to watch girls high school basketball … the list goes on and on. The biggest con I can see lends itself to my newest fear: You lose your boys.
Perhaps it is merely my personal experience that has lead me to this place. My father and his mother were not close. It’s not as if they were strangers, but he wasn’t exactly calling her to tell her how his day went, or just to shoot the shit. My own brother and mother have always been better with some distance between them and he wasn’t sitting up late with her when he was in high school to see what she thought of his most recent life-changing drama… because he was a boy, there was no real drama. And, even though men are supposed to have the dreaded mother-in-law, I’ve heard way more gripes over time from girls than I have from boys about their newfound families.
I’ve been fairly able to keep these dilisions to myself however following a few wacky weeks in August, I uttered the words, out loud, through tears … He doesn’t want me now. He’s definitely not going to want me when he’s 13. He’ll be oblivious of me when he’s 17. And I’ll lose him when he finds the love of his life. Can’t he just want me now? What I should have said instead (and what I communicated once I collected myself) was I don’t want him to not want you (my wonderfully, fabulous, husband). I just want him to want me, too. But instead, I sulked, stomped off and sucked my thumb in the corner like a baby (okay, perhaps a little dramatic). It’s one of those irrational, terrible moments that you have and anyone else, besides your ever-fantastic husby might use it against you.
I’m not trying to go all Modern Family Gloria on you but, it’s often a fact and I am most definitely not at all trying to take for granted the gift that is Barrett. But I will have boys. My boys will marry girls. Girls who call their own mothers daily, who will want to keep me at arms length, who will question my motives and my intentions — even though I am just being nice, who will always feel the need to be number one to my boys. And I will deal with it because I will be proud of the husbands and fathers my sons become … because of the parents we will be to them.
Given that I have a lifetime before Barrett gets to that stage, I suppose I could drop the irrational fear but let’s be real, that’s not likely. Since my minor break{down}through and crying fit regarding Barrett’s fervor toward his father, things have swayed more neutral and Barrett has even had his fair share of mommy days … and I suppose that until the day that I lose my boy, this will have to suffice.
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