Boys: The Secret No One Tells You
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
My husband used to say that he felt sorry for people “who have a girl and a boy and think they have one of every kind.” It’s a message most child-development researchers should take into account before they dive into writing parenting instruction books. You’d kind of assume that having five sons in a row meant we’d had enough “boy” experience to just float right through the eight or ten boy-raising years before Daughter #2 arrived—at least after we’d managed to get Son #1 moving in what we hoped was a productive direction! It was enormously disappointing to discover that what works for one “does not fit all.”
Son #2 was permanently thrown out of the nursery at church for biting other children—a behavior he learned from defending himself against his bigger, older brother, Son #1.
When Son #3 was a two-year-old, he was sitting on my very pregnant lap as I was trying to explain that soon he would have another little brother. “When the baby comes,” I said, “Ben will sit on daddy’s lap, and mama will hold the new baby.” This change of hierarchy didn’t ‘sit’ well with him, so he twisted around and delivered a ferocious punch to Son #4—who, unfortunately, was still residing in my tummy. I almost fell off the chair. Later Son #3 was so naturally orderly that when he ended up sharing a room with Son #2, he laid down a masking tape line on the carpet dividing the room in half so his brother’s mess didn’t hamper his lifestyle.
When Son #4 was born, he didn’t bother to cry. That was inefficient. He just turned his little naked body around so he could see the doctor and peed in his face. Even as a small child, he was a natural risk-assessment manager, analyzing whatever situation with which he was faced and making thoughtful, prudent, choices.
So it was something of a shock when Son # 5 leaped into the scene. He hated sitting still, refused to let anyone but his mother hold him, and cried pretty much non-stop until he discovered his chubby little legs could run. In fact, between ages two and four, Son #5 was so unrestrainable, he required a leash whenever we left the boundaries of the neighborhood. At least a couple of times a week, other moms would stop me and ask where they could buy one for their own adventurous sons. I should have bought stock in the company.
When Son #5 was four-years-old, one bright morning I sent him down the street for his first day at our neighborhood pre-school. He’d insisted we buy him a lunchbox like his older siblings carried to school even though he would only be gone two hours, and pre-school was just four doors away. Off he went, delighted with his new status as a “school-boy”. But when I woke him the next morning, he refused to get out of bed. “I thought you liked your teacher and your class yesterday,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “but they do papers. I’m not old enough to do papers.” At least he was honest.
I was relieved when Son #5 discovered that elementary school included recess—there was a subject he could get behind. In fifth or sixth grade, he broke his clavicle playing illegal tackle football on the playground. He didn’t tell me about it till I got home from work late that afternoon. After we spent a couple of hours in the emergency room getting x-rays and a shoulder brace and pain meds, etc., I asked him why he hadn’t had the school contact me immediately. “You were teaching. I didn’t know teachers could leave till after the last bell rang.” I assured him that the principal would find me a sub if there were a disaster at home. “Oh,” he said. And six weeks later, when he broke the other collarbone in yet another illegal tackle game, he had the school secretary call immediately.
Naturally, Son #6 wasn’t like any of his brothers, but we were long past expecting that we might get a break and have a “repeat” behavior pattern we had already learned to handle. Son #6 just out problem-solved everybody else and did exactly as he pleased. By then we were so old, it just wasn’t worth the effort to get too excited about it.
I always felt lucky to have two daughters to hang out with, but the one bit of information that those child researchers might have mentioned when I was still hoping to make sense of my sons’ wildly different personalities was that “boys grow up to take care of their moms.” I had no idea.
After I had a mild heart attack, Son #5 came from Colorado to help out. He was half-way through mowing our rather large yard when he disappeared. An hour later he came back towing a riding lawn tractor. “Mom,” he said, “you’re too old to be pushing a grass cutter. Use this instead.”
Son #1 has called to check on us every single week since he left home almost 30 years ago—including two years in Canada and two in Australia. And the fact that he was far away didn’t deter him from seeing that his brothers filled in for him when we needed something.
When Son #2 passed away some years ago, it was Son #3 who sat next to me with his arm around my shoulders the next morning, and we wept together. He even took a week off in the middle of a medical school semester and flew home to explain hospital procedures when his dad required 14 hours of brain surgery– plus months of recovery.
Sons #4 and 6 untangle all my technology chaos without hardly a roll of their eyes and regularly show up to help with projects I don’t even know need to be repaired. But best of all, I see each of my sons’ faces reflected in the grandchildren who race in to grab a drink and a snack after swimming for hours in the backyard on summer afternoons.
I guess the instruction manual didn’t matter as much as the love did.