Teach Your Children

I have a confession to make -- when I first saw in the 20-week sonogram that my second child was missing a male appendage, I was upset.  Disappointed.  I had a boy already, and I knew the outrageous, almost supernatural love that comes from the first wisps of motherhood.  I wanted to experience the same exact thing - again.

But the tech assured me that we were having a daughter, and while my husband wept at the prospect of a daddy’s little girl, I sat there stone-faced.  How was I going to get through this?  I don’t even know how to make a French braid. My attempts at eyeshadow make me look like a drag queen. 

I had never questioned my preparedness for having a son.  I know about math and science, the basics of driving car, that the World Series was for baseball and the Stanley Cup for hockey.  Any rollover that I couldn’t cover would be answered by his dad.  A girl, however, would need a more knowledgeable teacher.

The younger of two sisters, I declared myself the smart one after losing the battle for the prettiest.  My sister instinctively knew about things like shoes and pocket-books, and that they were supposed to match each other.  I am not a girly-girl.  And now it would matter.

Anna spent her first winter in her brother’s blue blanket sleepers, her blond curls rebelliously peeking out of her hand-me-down hat.  She declared pink as “my color” at eighteen months old, and own it she did.  The mornings before nursery school were fraught with tantrums if I dared to hold out a pair of pants for her.  “That’s not a beautiful dress!” she would scream, in a voice so shrill it could cut glass. So a beautiful dress it was.  With tights.  And shiny Mary Janes.

Then last week, something happened. Anna’s ballet instructor informed us waiting moms that the girls’ recital dresses were ordered.  They would be pink and purple sequined, with a teddy bear in *gasp* matching dresses.  I clapped my hands together.  God help me, I squealed.  Here it was, the culmination of all the instruction I had been unwittingly been put to in the three years since Anna was born. 

I’ve learned to be a girl, taught by the most knowledgeable 3 year-old on the planet - my daughter.