What Are Little Boys Made Of?
Frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails, is that what little boys are made of? Perhaps. (With a few dinosaurs, trucks and pirates thrown in for good measure.) It's taken me six years, but I think I'm slowly getting the hang of this bringing-up-boys thing.
When I was pregnant for the second time, part of me really wanted the child to be a girl. I come from a family of three girls. I am a girl. I understand girls. So it was natural for me to long for someone to dress up in pretty clothes, adorn with sparkly jewellery and plait her golden locks. When I found out it was another boy, there was a momentary sense of “Ah...” While I was trying to overcome this muted disappointment, my wise mother gave me a book. It was called What Little Boys Are Made Of: Loving Who They Are and Who They Will Become and it's filled with delightful 1950s-style paintings by Jim Daly of boys with torn pants playing in the garden with dogs and reading comic books.
That book was a godsend. It snapped me out of my feelings of being hard done by and woke me up to the reality that I was being blessed with a boy. The book reminded me of what I knew deep inside me already: Boys are wonderful. Boys are full of adventure and want to conquer the world. Boys are future leaders in the making. Boys love climbing and sliding and getting wet and dirty. Boys are “nature's answer to that false belief that there is no such thing as perpetual motion”. Boys learn by doing, by experimenting, by trying. What an awesome privilege to shape a little life to become the kind of men the world so sorely needs – secure, confident, full of integrity and caring.
Last week I was at a children's party and a mom was expressing her misgivings about having a boy (her firstborn is a girl). “I just don't know boys,” she said helplessly. I reassured her that as long as she was willing to learn a thing or two about trucks, pirates and dinosaurs, she'd be fine. I can say quite frankly that I could not tell the difference between a digger, an excavator or a grader before I had boys (or a stegosaurus and a diplodocus either, for that matter). I didn't know what a poop deck was or which side of a ship was port, starboard, bow or stern. And the learning continues unabated – a few days ago I added the word “halberd” and “truncheon” to my vocabulary (very important words too, if you're dealing with castles or defending law and order).
In fact, you could say that my education into boyhood is only just beginning, with Samuel now six years old and Matthew four. By the time we're done raising them, perhaps I could write a book about it. Or maybe I'll just be gearing myself up for becoming a grandparent. Do you think it will be boys or girls? I wonder...
Katherine Graham is a writer based in Cape Town. Last year she was longlisted for the Golden Baobab Prize. Her children's book, The Lemon Tree, is due to be published by Penguin Random House soon. Read the full article here