It’s Monday morning and my
house is fabulously quiet, except for the Oscar Peterson jazz CD playing on the
stereo, and the sound of melted snow trickling off my roof.
I have this glorious solitude
for about 45 more minutes, when I will go and get Tru from kindergarten, feed
him lunch and get him ready for the play-date happening here this afternoon.
Being the mom of boys, it is
never, ever quiet around here; except when my men are at school or asleep. I know little girls can be loud too, but
the level and type of noise that happens in my house, I rarely witness in homes where
girls dominate. It’s basically a
constant cacophony of vehicular sound effects, boy-sterious wrestle mania
reverberations and yelps, mixed with loud expressions of immediate needs and
heightened Lego negations. Then
there are the hilariously funny 5 and 10-year-old jokes and antics, often
capped off with some sort of bodily function-related finale.
Hold-on, don’t get me wrong;
I honestly do love being a “boy-mom”, as we call ourselves.
I grew up with
two older brothers, I was the only girl on the boy’s elementary soccer and Little
League teams, and I have always felt comfortable around guys. But sometimes a
girl just needs to step out of testosterone village and connect with her
feminine side.
So yesterday I suggested the
boys, (two little and one big), take advantage of the 30-degree heat wave and
go play some football outside.
They loved the idea, and I
had visions of me in a warm, bubbly tub catching up on back issues of the
People magazines my husband brings home from his TV job. (a true guilty
pleasure for me.)
Then came the plea from my
little grid-iron gang…” hurry and get changed mom, you can be on Dad’s
team!” (Pregnant pause here)
“Ah, really guys? you want me
to play too?”
There was no way to say no to
these three smiling dudes, all gooped-up on football speed.
So up I ran to throw on my
old jeans, my ragged sneakers, and as many layers of shirts as possible, and
off we went to the neighborhood field.
At first I didn’t really want
to be tackled in the snow and suggested we play two-hand touch. Bet you can guess how well that went
over.
I could hear my inner perfect
parent yelling, “Come on woman! play all out with your boys and show them how much
you dig hanging with them…and show em’ what a girl can do on that field.
So I did.
And it was fantastic.
I tackled and got tackled,
became soaked laying in snowy heaps after every play, out-ran both my boys for an
awesome TD, and soaked up their excitement in seeing me not as their manicure
loving, make-up wearing, slightly over-protective mom, but rather as just one of the boys.