My sons are as different as night and day in so many ways, but the fact is that they share a testosterone-driven bond with my husband that I will never be in on. Every so often I try to “get” it. My latest attempt was snuggling up with them on the couch to watch The Dark Knight –not the new Batman movie currently in theaters, but the one from 2008, where Heath Ledger played the Joker. So creepy.
I tried to fit in, but I just made them mad each time I muted the interminable shooting, torture, explosion, car chase and crash scenes. It’s like coming back to a food you don’t like every so often to see if it tastes any better. It worked with artichokes. It hasn’t worked with violent films. (My sons admonish me–these are “action” films. “Why don’t you like them, Mom?”)
My best Mother’s Day gift ever was when my boys, of their own volition, offered to mark the holiday by watching The Iron Lady with me. Their willingness to spend an hour and a half observing Meryl Streep depict Margarget Thatcher was such a selfless act on their parts that it brought tears to my eyes.
I’m no girly girl. As I recently told my blogger friend Bill Apablasa in response to his post about the benefits of adding a little testosterone to your life (for men and women alike), I can handle slime, dirt, electric drills, and pest management. I’m constantly trapping crickets in the house that have escaped before being fed to my son’s pet
gecko. I have only recently started to wear pink to keep boy hands off my stuff, especially my running socks.
But I still feel like the orange among three apples from the Sesame Street song “One of these things is not like the others, three of these things are kind of the same…” Most of the time, I just don’t understand.
When my 16-year-old son told me about having inadvertently knocked the wind out of another player during a soccer game I hadn’t attended, I asked, “Did you help him up?”
He looked at me incredulously, then retorted with full honesty, “Mom, he’s a competitor, not a person.”
Chalk one up for nature trumping nurture, at least on the soccer field.
For all you mothers of boys out there, does this resonate? If so, consider leaving a comment!
