Boy Joy

Growing up if you had asked me if I had wanted to have boys or girls I would have told you, two girls and one boy. As a woman I can’t help but desire to have a daughter. I look forward to tea parties with dolls, hair braiding and tutus. Oh, how I want to see tutus! Why one boy? Why not? I don’t have any brothers and we didn’t live close to my male cousins. Boys were (and still mostly are) completely foreign to me, but I am learning. I am not one of the women that my mother frequently laments about hating my own gender and wanting only boys. Personally, I have never understood how a woman wouldn’t want to have a daughter.

But I have learned a lot about boys in the last year, well, at least this boy. I know all his tickle spots and I know that if I look at him just right he will begin to giggle uncontrollably. I know that when he gives me a particular impish smile I know he is about to do something extremely naughty and extremely funny. Tonight he laid on the couch, head in my lap as I caressed his head. I knew he was almost asleep. I could feel his body relax and his breathing began to slow. Until I began to giggle and his little head began to bounce up and down on my round belly. I couldn’t help myself, I was just so tickled and a few seconds later Duc began laughing too. He rolled his little head back so he could look at my face while he laughed, but he laughed. And the beauty of it brought tears to my eyes and we laughed some more.

While Duc and I bonded and attached surprisingly easy and fast, I have noticed a change in the last few weeks. It seems deeper and more intimate. A few years ago I used to dream of the day when I had a son or daughter that would lay the length of my body as we sat on the couch and played or rested. Since Duc and I have both been under the weather lately we have had much more couch time. He has developed a few new games while we lay here coughing. But in the last hour of the day he crawls up into my lap and lays his head in my lap or against my arm and we just enjoy being close. The little boy that was too busy for hugs now enjoys a long hug and the promise of a kiss-kiss. And last week while wrestling he feel asleep in the crook of my legs and I remembered the dream that I once had. The moment had finally arrived and it was incredible.

These days I don’t fear boys. In fact, when a friend called me this morning to share her good news I wished her a boy.