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I love my daughters. I do. Parenting girls— and now, young women— has been one of the most stretching, soul-filling experiences of my life. I’ve learned so much about women and, by extension, myself, by guiding and walking alongside these precious people as they’ve wrestled with the hard parts and reveled in the best bits. I wouldn’t wish away a second of being called Momma by my girls.
But, boys.
I don’t know why, but there’s something God wrote inside my heart long before I wore the banner of mother that connects me to each of my sons. Meeting each of them—either at the moment their birth-slick bodies were placed on my chest or the minute I felt the weight of their fragile, new-to-me selves in my arms— somehow summoned up a place so familiar to me that I felt like I was welcoming a piece of myself home. I have no idea how or why this is, other than to say that God knew in advance that I’d have a passel of boys, and gave me a separate heart string for each of them to ensure that I’d bond as well with sixth as I did with the first.
My boys are not easy. Well, not unless you think a four-month old crawling well enough to scale stairs is easy, or a toddler who slipped into an elephant barn is easy, or teenagers prone to wrestling one another to the kitchen floor while washing dishes are easy. They are too loud, brag too often, think fart jokes are prime entertainment, and are eager to best one another in what often feels like a never-ending game of Alpha Dog. Every day (and I do mean every day) ends in dirt. Grass stains and pockets full of sand combine with motor oil and spray paint and blood. We go through more Tecnu Poison Ivy Scrub, Frankincense, OxyClean Stain Sticks, and white crew socks than is reasonable, and I can tell you that a solid 99% of it is used on the male inhabitants of our house.
I’ve spent hours of my life learning the names of heavy machinery (calling an excavator a “digger,” is a newbie Boy Mom move that will not be tolerated by little men over the age of three, I can tell you), sitting in parking lots watching trains roll by, cataloging the full equipment list of a firefighter, listening to comparisons of WWII-era fighter planes, and grappling with different theories of what actually happens on the edge of a black hole. My boys have been passionate about a whole list of things that I never thought would intrigue me and yet, because of the spark in their eyes as they’ve chewed on their own excitement, I’ve become a student of disciplines that never caught my fancy before. My life has been made richer by their need to know exactly what magma is made of, or where the most notable examples of Bauhaus architecture are located.
My girls have had interests, too, of course. Before Birdie picked up violin, I knew much less about the violin. Mary Hannah led me to know more about the French culture, about the mechanics of birth, and endless theories on why and how, specifically, the Titanic sank. But somehow these things didn’t pull me so far into the deep waters of Places I Never Saw Myself Going.
My boys? They maroon me on islands of my own ignorance daily. And because of this, I have to acknowledge that God knew that I needed boys. Otherwise, I’d have stayed in my own comfortable space, my girls and I, doing things that made me tread water, sure. But not this. Not… boys.
Not, “seriously, do not throw ants at people!” Not, “you know, I’ve never considered how, exactly, a vending machine works.” Not, “flame throwers are not ‘cool.’ They’re weapons designed to burn people alive.” Not, “please tell me you didn’t jump from there with that knife in your hand.” Not, “can we stop talking about prosecuting Nazis after WWII at the dinner table?”
Those are gifts given to me by my sons. And yes, they are gifts. Gifts I didn’t ask for, gifts I didn’t see coming, but gifts I accept with open hands. God knows what each of us need as parents. He places just the right mix in every family to encourage us, challenge us, and refine us. God knew that what I needed was boys— six of them, to be exact.