Tag: Gender Differences

Second Chances

I not talking about what is known as second chance adoptions as sad as that reality is.  I’m talking about the second chance life gave me and I hope those who have suffered their own failures at parenting will take heart.

This Sunday, we will go out into the forest among the Wild Azaleas and make a photo of myself with the two boys I am lucky to have in my own life.  We have done this every year without fail since the older boy was born.  You see, when I was young, I gave birth to a daughter who was and remains very dear to me.  Yet, I struggled to support us and in doing so, inadvertently lost the opportunity to parent her and have her in my life during her childhood.  I remember as the years went by looking for birthday cards for “my daughter” and that causing despair because they did not describe the unique kind of relationship I had with her.  Thankfully, we are close and I am grateful for that much.

When I remarried late in life and after 10 years of being with my husband who never wanted to have children – he changed his mind.  Over Margaritas at a Mexican restaurant he announced to me that he actually did want to become a father and it wasn’t easy for us because I was too old to conceive without medical assistance.  To conceive, I had to accept the loss of my genetic connection to my sons.  They would not exist any other way and they would not be who they are otherwise.

Yet, they grew in my womb and nursed at my breast.  I have been in their lives 24/7 with a few minor exceptions.  Parenting boys has been challenging because I grew up the oldest of three girls.  I was unprepared for the boisterous behavior of male children and through it was far from perfect – they and I survived it.  I was told as I struggled in their younger time that boys are more difficult when young and girls more difficult in puberty.  I don’t know if that is true but the boys are a joy and easy to live with now.  Whatever has caused that blessing, I am grateful.

I am also grateful to know I can actually parent.  It is a life-long sorrow that I lost that time with my daughter.  Children don’t stop growing and you can’t recover what is lost in your absence.  Happy Mother’s Day to all moms.

What Is Lost

I think about it sometimes.  I read in the book Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman that one of the things a daughter misses out on when a mother dies while she is yet young is a lot of little things that are transferred in person.

In this case, it is a smidgen of milk added to an egg to help the white break up as it is stirred for a scrambled egg.  My youngest son wants to eat one almost every day at the moment and I don’t cook it the same way my mom did, we use a microwave.  And it is a bit complex to get it just right – several little cookings and stirrings until it is no longer wet.

My mom made certain we knew how to do all kinds of wifely things because I grew up in a era when the differences between little boys and little girls were clearly drawn, though feminism was beginning to soften the lines.  Though we were a family of all girls and there were no boys, causing me to become somewhat of a tomboy growing up close to my dad.

Mothers could, and probably should, teach their sons some of the things that my mom taught us.  There is no guarantee there will be a compliant servant wife to do them for my sons.  At the same time, childhood is so brief.  I understand that so clearly now.  My mom’s mother didn’t teach her much in the way of wifely things.  She said she was quite ignorant about how to do even the simplest thing at first but she muddled through and became quite proficient.

The world is changing so quickly.  Who knows what life will be like when my sons become independent ?  Somehow, I just believe, they will figure out what they need to figure out for themselves.  We all do.