Not Actually a Boy, and Here Are the Reasons Why

When I said the other day that I was going to try to do a post every day in August, I was hoping to pull my daily readership back into the low (very low) triple digits, which is where it lives when I'm posting regularly. And then my article at Friends Journal about the Tiny Tornado's gender history went viral. I don't know how many total hits it's gotten, but nearly over 14,000 people have "liked" it on Facebook, and it's been reblogged and linked to all over the place, including at It Bets Better, which must have given it a big boost.

The article has driven traffic to this blog as well. I got nearly 4000 hits on Friday, though today we're down to a mere 1500 (so far). I figure today's decline marks the end of my fifteen minutes, and I'm trying to accept it with good grace. By tomorrow I'll be a has-been, and by Tuesday, I hope to be poised for a comeback.

The response has been overwhelmingly good, but of course we've had the usual assortment of judgment and ignorance, and one or two actual trolls. A favorite activity for commentators is explaining why the Tiny Tornado could not possibly be a boy. We have heard all of these theories before, and we're going to hear them again. Here's what I think of them as of today.

1. Sexism

This is a common theory. It goes like this: The Tiny Tornado, observing the sexism that is rampant in our culture and recognizing the limited options available for women, decides to be a boy to protect himself and to give himself more opportunities.

Why I love it: A child who is two or three is not imagined to know enough about his internal landscape to express a preference about his own gender expression, but is nonetheless somehow able to analyze and interpret the cultural landscape in a sophisticated way and make a rational decision to maximize his privilege within it.

2. He is emulating his older brothers.

Another popular contender. In this one, the Tiny Tornado is so enamored of his older brothers that he abandons his innate and biological sex and gender in order to be more like them.

Why I love it: The Tiny Tornado, an independent, assertive, confident, fashion-conscious, extroverted athlete who doesn't sit still even when watching TV, is almost nothing like his older brothers. If he were emulating his older brothers, he'd consider extended periods of "alone time" to be essential to his functioning; he'd sit still for hours on end, building with Lego, reading, or playing Minecraft on-line with friends. If he wanted to be like Word Boy, he'd be more interested in dissecting animals than in training them, and if he wanted to be like the Lego Savant, he'd have a passion for history. His older brothers are wonderful kids and well worth emulating. But the Tiny Tornado is a force unto himself.

3. He's never seen a girl playing hockey or wearing an oxford shirt.

In other words, he simply lacks role models for the kind of tomboy he really is.

Why I love it: The theorist imagines that ze knows what the Tiny Tornado has and has not seen, and also that something as minor as a girl playing hockey (which he owns a book about) or wearing an oxford shirt (which he has seen many times on the older girls down the street who dress very well) could shape a person's entire identity. It would be like diverting the mighty Mississippi with a popsicle stick.

3. He doesn't know that being a lesbian is an option.

To be fair, this is actually part of the gender pathway for many gender-variant kids. It is not uncommon, I am told by people who know a lot more than I do about these things, for a kid to approach puberty, begin to feel sexual attractions, become aware of lesbians and gay men through the media, and realize that they can resolve their sense of not-fitting by coming out rather than by transitioning.

Why it doesn't work for the Tiny Tornado: many if not most of our closest friends are in same-sex relationships, including TT's much-loved Uncle Toots, who is practically a third parent to him. In addition, the two women next door, who are the best neighbors in the world and also TT's mentors in the world of dog training, are an affectionate couple who love each other very much and are not exactly conventional in the femininity department.

4. He wore a Spiderman t-shirt the summer he was two, and wanted short hair.

Nobody actually thinks that wearing a Spiderman t-shirt and cutting his hair makes TT a boy. But they think I think it.

Why I love this: Because these people simply don't know us. I identified as a lesbian for much of my adult life, and have a whole string of butch lovers in my past (and maybe not only in my past). If there is one thing I know about women, it's that they can have short hair and shop in the menswear department. In fact, I'd say that one of the things I love about women is that they can have short hair and shop in the menswear department.

Also: although I currently have luxuriant curly hair, this is me in the summer of 2009, holding my newborn nephew. Why did I have that haircut? Because I wanted to. Am I a girl? Yes.

Su Penn, who identifies as a girl, rocks her buzz cut.

5. His parents are unable to imagine anything beyond the gender binary.

I'm being playful in this post, so I won't rant about how people seem to believe that transgender kids somehow have an obligation to be "ungendered" or "bigendered" that their non-trans counterparts don't share. I will say that I do my best to imagine what is beyond the gender binary because people I love live there. And maybe the Tiny Tornado isn't fully aware of the option to be both/and or neither/nor or "other," but he has encountered the possibility. Our kids met a both/and adult who was helping in the children's program at TransHealth, and meeting zer challenged all three of them in ways that we are still having conversations about.

6. His parents are pushing him, deliberately or subconsciously, into a male identity for self-aggrandizement or to further their own political agenda.

Yeah, OK, this one is totally true.

Ha, no. Just kidding. If anything, our love of GLBTQ people (including our own selves) and our sense that we would find it somewhat satisfying if one or more of our kids grew up to be G, L, B, T, and/or Q led us to hold back, to not take steps like suggesting male pronouns or a name change until the Tiny Tornado brought them up or was offered them by other adults, because we didn't want to push him. We were always supportive, I think, but we really forced him to be very clear with us. If you want to know more about just how slow I really was to let go of the bright, sassy girl I was sure he was going to grow into, you might want to read the story of the daisy dress in this post from last August.

I sometimes still feel a little sad when I see a black girl of 6 or 7 or 8, with her hair done up nice in braids and beads, wearing something bold like a purple skirt with red tights, and bossing somebody around. I thought he was going to be that girl. I love boys. I love being the mother of boys. I was going to love my daughter, though, just as much. I wanted that girl, no denying it, and letting her go grieved me, even as I celebrated the emerging little boy.

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Some Conversations with My Kids

Warning: Self-Satisfied Mommy Blogging.

1.

The kids and I are walking from the ballfield to our car along a narrow edge of grass beside the parking lot. The Lego Savant's hand bumps mine every time it swings back as I walk.

Me: Are you doing that on purpose?

Lego Savant: Doing what? [He grins mischievously.]

Me: We should have named you Alec. For Smart Alec.

Word Boy: What should you have named me?

Me: Um...

Lego Savant: Brain Boy. Um... The Knower, because you know so much.

Me: The Thinker.

The Tiny Tornado: I am The Thinker, too. Because I am always thinking of things. I always have ideas.

Word Boy: I don't really know so much, it's more like I am always asking questions.

Lego Savant: The Questioner. Curiosity Man!

2.

Word Boy reads in his bunk bed until I get the Tiny Tornado settled, and then I go in to tuck him in. He says, "I like my bunk bed. I like my room." He looks around the room, and then says, "Hey, are the blades on the ceiling fan tilted on purpose, or did something happen to them?"

Me: It's on purpose so they push the air better.

Him: Are all fans like that?

Me: Yeah, pretty much. And propellers.

Him: Huh, I didn't know that. I guess I thought they would just be straight. How did they make them that way? Do they twist?

I inspect the fan: No, the blades themselves are straight, but the things that hold them on are made so that they hold them at an angle.

Him: Ah.

He collects his five special stuffed friends and gathers them into his arms while I climb onto a stool and turn the tangled ball of covers back into a sheet and a blanket. He lies down, all five friends in his arms. I cover him up. He rolls on his side, tugs the blanket up under his chin, and closes his eyes. He gets the same supremely contented look that he has gotten every day of his life when he feels cozy and safe. And then he is asleep.

3.

We are at the park, me and my three kids and a 4-year-old friend ("The Boy With the Beautiful Smile," maybe. Accurate, but too long. I'll have to keep thinking). The Lego Savant is pushing the other three on the tire swing. He gets them really going, then sits beside me on the bench to watch them spin. They are hanging their heads backwards and laughing and laughing.

The Lego Savant: I love making little kids happy.

4. One night, at a Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia, the Lego Savant keeps finding water chestnuts on his plate even though they aren't part of his dish. The Tiny Tornado is sneaking them on there, it turns out, because he knows how much the Lego Savant likes them.

5. That's it. Mostly I just wanted to try out this new blogging software for the iPad.

6. Smug, self-satisfied mommy blogging? Don't say you weren't warned.
 

The Literature Scholar Has a Baby

Earlier tonight I found myself poking around in e-mails I sent to friends when Word Boy was a baby. By then, I was three years out of grad school in English Literature, but I still had this tendency to bring my talents to bear on any literature I encountered. Which at this time--June 29, 2004--was Blue's Clues:

The Lego Savant is watching Blue's Clues. It's one of those weird episodes where Steve hints that his life is not perfect: in this one, he feels sad because he never finds the clues first. But it's his fate never to find the clues first, but to wander around like an idiot saying, "What? I need to tie my shoe? You wish you had some glue? For lunch, we're having stew? Oh, a clue!" It should be impossible for him to imagine any other option, because this is a given in his world and it cannot be changed.

Never mind how strange the episodes are where Joe comes to take over--again, there should be no hint of an outside world, or that anyone could come and go from Steve's weird little life with his talking furniture and crazy dog. And yet, one day he gets a phone call from his brother who is coming to visit. And then Steve escapes from the enchantment, leaving Joe to live his weird life--exactly as Steve lived it. Joe says and does everything exactly as Steve did. Again, it's very strange when Joe is being taught how to do it all--it opens up the possibility that things don't have to be done that way, and emphasizes their strangeness.

But that's just me: "The introduction of Joe underscores the regimentation of life at Blue's house, where no deviation from any given behavior is tolerated, whether the 'Blue's Clues' hand motion or the dance that goes with the 'Think, think, think,' song. Yet the fact that Joe can come from outside the world of the narrative--and that the man-child Steve can escape the two-dimensional cartoon neighborhood in which he has resided, stepping back into the flow of time which surrounds it--creates a rift in the narrative through which the text can be deconstructed to reveal its malleability and artificiality."

And on July 20, 2004, Green Eggs & Ham

The Lego Savant loves to rhyme. A lot of times, he makes a rhyme work with nonsense syllables: this morning he came up with something like, "Here's a string, ropey-dopey; famma gamma scopey-scopey." But a couple of weeks ago he produced this couplet which he liked so much he has often repeated it:

It was dark in the night
So I turned on the light.

He has picked up the habit of anapest from Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is a master of the anapestic foot, two unstressed followed by one stressed syllable, which looks like this:

on the FIF teenth of MAY, in the JUN gle of NOOL
in the HEAT of the DAY, in the COOL of the POOL,
He was SPLASH ing, en JOY ing the JUN gle's great JOYS
When HOR ton the EL e phant HEARD a small NOISE

That fourth line starts with a two-syllable foot, but that's OK. That's the kind of thing poets do. I think you could teach scansion to college freshman using Dr. Seuss. If anyone taught scansion anymore. Which they don't. Not since the death of formalism.

Anyway, you'll notice that the Lego Savant's little couplet is anapestic: It was DARK in the NIGHT so i TURNED on the LIGHT. His literary influences are showing.

Did I ever tell you about the time the Lego Savant had made me read him Green Eggs and Ham so many times that I got bored, and to amuse myself I used the book to explain "narrative arc" to him, and who the protagonist is (the un-named Green Eggs and Ham Hater) and who the antagonist (Sam-I-Am) and what is the rising action and and what is the climax and what is the denouement. "Green Eggs and Ham," I told him, "is nearly Aristotelian in its adherence to the form." He was impressed. I think he was two.

The Lego Savant, at three, had his own ideas about books:

Today, the Lego Savant chose In a People House. I said, "Oh, that's a good book."

Lego Savant: Except the end.

Su: The end? Where the people come home and throw the mouse and the bird out?

The Lego Savant: yeah.

The Lego savant studies the cover: Maybe in another book, the people come out to the yard and come up the tree to where the bird is and the...the...the...what's that?

Su: A mouse.

The Lego Savant: and the mouse and they invite the bird and the mouse into the house. I think that's what happens in another People House book. We should get that book. They have it at the library with the trains, but not at the library that just has the legos.

You know how you always hear parents saying, "I wish I'd written down some of the cute things my kids said"? I will never have that regret. I wrote something like 500 single-spaced pages in the year after the Lego Savant was born.

OK, I have to share one more thing, that has nothing to do with books, because this is one of the most hilarious things that has ever happened to me as a mom. It is now August of 2004:

It's 5:50 p.m. A recent IM from Raider has told me that he is heading out of work and will pick up a baguette at the bakery to have with dinner. I am on the couch nursing Word Boy and reading a novel. The Lego Savant is next to me, playing with a little motorized train engine about five inches long and maintaining a running commentary which I have mostly tuned out, so although I hear it, it doesn't register when he says, "I'm going to cut your hair." The next thing I know, the train engine is on my head--affixed there by my hair, which has been wound around and around its axle (I presume). It is pulling a big hunk of my hair, it really hurts, and the train engine is perched on my head at a jaunty angle like a little hat from the 1940s. I say, "Lego Savant, I know you didn't know it would do that, and you didn't mean to hurt me, but I want you to go to your room and wait there quietly until your Daddy comes to get you."

And then I have to sit there with the train attached to my head until Raider gets home, wondering whether he is going to have to shave a hunk of my hair to get it off, and considering whether I will wear a scarf or a hat until it grows back in.

I am happy to report that Raider was able to rescue me by running the wheels backwards to unwind my hair, and although I have a tender spot, I also still have my hair.

I'm so glad it was nearly time for him to come home, and that he had the car. Can you imagine if I'd had to drive to pick him up with a red engine on my head? Choo-choo! "Hi, honey. I need you to meet me in the parking lot in 10 minutes. Bring scissors. I'll explain when I get there."

And people wonder why I shaved my head for three years. Raider used to have long hair until the Lego Savant reached the hair-pulling stage. It's just safer this way.

We Are Experiencing a Short Delay

Five years ago, Word Boy had just turned three. He had also just started sleeping through the night. Like his older brother, he was an easy three-year-old: busy, self-entertaining, reasonably independent. I have a note from this time that one day they spent the whole afternoon building a submarine in the living room; another day, they spent 6 hours outside making forts in the front yard.

I was enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of being well-rested day after day, and the freedom that the kids ignoring me for long stretches of time gave me. I took up long-forgotten hobbies, dusting off my sewing machine and doing a couple of small projects before I sat down to piece together a quilt top for Word Boy's bed. I expected to finish it in a month or two, and then work on something for the Lego Savant.

We expected to wait another year or, more likely, eighteen months, before we brought a baby home. I settled in to enjoy this hiatus from intensive child-rearing. As the weeks passed, I began to enjoy myself so much that I became aware of a deadline, an unknown point in the future beyond which, if we didn't already have a third baby, it would be too late. I wouldn't be willing to go back.

Indeed, when our agency called on August 1 to offer us a birthmother match, I had no hesitation about accepting it, but part of me was whining, "I'm not ready! I've only had three months' worth of sleep!"

A few days later, we picked the Tiny Tornado up at the hospital, and did not put her down again for over three months, because that's the kind of baby she was.

You know how you pace yourself for the finish line? You've had a rough day with the kids, and your partner or babysitter is supposed to come at 6, but is fifteen minutes late. Is anything harder than that last 15 minutes you didn't expect? Or, say, your 2-mile run turns out to be 2.2 miles. No problem, if you've planned for 2.2--but if not, that last fifth of a mile can be excruciating. That's how I felt about my final child turning three: that it would be, in some ways, the end of the line. I remember, a few months before the Tornado came home, watching my two kids dash off into a waterpark, and saying to a friend, "My life is going to be so easy when the last of my kids is three."

Somewhere, a god laughed.

Here's a note from September 28, 2007:

The Lego Savant and Word Boy spent practically the whole day in the front yard again. Mountain-climbing, parachuting, and exploring strange new worlds.

My baby, smiley as she is now (which isn't really ALL that smiley--she doles them out like they cost their weight in gold), has not let me put her down in three days. I haven't had a shower since Wednesday morning. She's not unhappy. She just wants to be held. Awake, asleep, dozy, active, relaxed: all of it in-arms.

I'm a bit tired from it. She's up to 8.5 pounds, and having her in the sling is just that tiny bit wearing--the kind of thing where you first put it on and say, "Hey, this is nothing, I hardly notice she's there," and by 36 hours later, are ready to fall down. Every job is just that bit more awkward. Like the house has been filled with knee-deep water.

A year later, September 18, 2008:

The Tiny Tornado has never been the kind of baby you could easily distract. Some babies, if they're playing with something they shouldn't, you can just pop something else into their hand and take the choking hazard away, and they'll goo cheerfully. The Tornado, never. She's single-minded. We weren't even able to distract her from her love of television remotes and cellphones by buying her a toy cellphone. She is contemptuous of the toy phone. She wants the real thing.

She rose to new heights the other night, though, holding a grudge against David after he took away some paper clips I'd carelessly let her get hold of. He would offer to pick her up and she would shake her head and crawl away at top speed. Over and over. Her first full sentence might have been, "Oh, you want to get all lovey now, do you? After you took my paper clips? Fat chance, buster."

October 7, 2009:

The other day, the Tiny Tornado brought me a tube of toothpaste and her toothbrush as I worked on the computer in the Lego Savant's room. I put a little paste on her toothbrush, and she of course sucked it off because she's at that age, and then she brushed a little, and then held out her brush for "More!"

"No more toothpaste," I told her.

She left, returning a moment later with a different tube of toothpaste. I took it from her and set it on the desk next to the other one. "No more toothpaste," I said, "Too much toothpaste isn't good for little kids."

She runs off again, coming back with yet another tube of toothpaste--this one our housemate Andon's I think. I put it on the desk with the others, &c. This did not end until all the toothpaste in the bathroom (a surprising amount and variety) plus a tube of Andon's Clearasil had been brought to the Lego Savant's room.

I don't have a quote from right when she turned three. Because I didn't write anything for three months. Coincidence? I think not. But this is from November 29, 2010, when she was just about three years, four months old:

Y. is like a tornado wrapped in a hurricane with a side of world domination, but she's otherwise a pleasure.

From her third birthday on, my whole life basically consisted of that 15 minutes when you thought the babysitter would already be there, or that .2 miles when you thought you'd be sitting down and drinking your Gatorade by now. I kept telling people, "I'm ready to move on to the next stage of my life, but I can't. The Tiny Tornado won't let me."

Six months, eight months, twelve. I'm hanging fire. Eighteen months. I'm like a runner in the blocks and the starting gun never goes off.

And then, finally. Finally, I get the go-ahead.

You notice I got the juggling balls out again a couple of weeks ago. You notice I took up crocheting. You notice I'm going back to school in September. Sure, you also notice that the Tiny Tornado is going to Begindergarten instead of homeschooling next year. You notice that I'm feeling quite nervous about the end of preschool in less than two weeks, that I have become one of those parents who looks forward to summer vacation with a mix of pleasure and trepidation. Because she is nothing like her brothers were at 3, 4, and 5, and to be with her all day every day for more than a few days in a row is exhausting and a bit wearing on the patience.

But she's mellowed in the last six months. No, that's not right. She has not mellowed a bit. But she has begun to channel her energy more productively. Her abilities have caught up with her aspirations. She really can pour her own juice; she can build an obstacle course in the living room and spend awhile playing on it; she can join in with the Lego Savant and Word Boy when they have a sword fight going; she can play video games with them. She can run errands with me and be a pleasant companion and helper.

I was in the basement the other day, and said to myself, "What's in this bag on the shelf here?" It was Word Boy's quilt top. It just needs its border cut and sewed on. I can begin to imagine that this will actually happen.

Pretty, Pretty Princess

Ever since I wrote yesterday about the Tiny Tornado and her love of all things culturally coded "boy," I'm been thinking about the girls who love the things coded "girl." I like these girls, too, and I want to be careful that, when we're cheering the Tiny Tornado on as she engages the world in what is obviously a very self-directed and awesome way, we're not inadvertently dismissing kids whose awesomeness doesn't cut across the grain. Those of us who are nonconforming in some significant way love to see nonconforming kids letting their freak flag fly, especially if we weren't able to fly ours.

But sometimes we carelessly talk as if kids who clearly identify as "boy" or "girl," or whose dress is comfortably within the limits of what is culturally approved, are not also exercising their preferences. As if the only reason a girl could love princesses is because she's a weak-headed dupe of the patriarchy.

It's important to remember that the limits of what is culturally approved actually encompass a lot of variation. Sometimes it's relatively sublte. Word Boy and the Lego Savant are both pretty much "typical" boys, and they both dress in a fairly standard boy-style costume of t-shirts and cargo pants or sweats. But the Lego Savant has a strong preference for solid, dark colors--he wears a lot of black t-shirts. If they have any design on them, it's probably a skull. Word Boy likes stripes. He has a lot of navy blue t-shirts with red or light blue or gray or maroon stripes. Neither of them is very athletic, but their friend A--also a "typical" boy--is. He is athletically talented and self-confident to the point of boldness. I can remember watching a bunch of kids run across a field when A and the Lego Savant were preschoolers, and just watching them run randomly around, you could see A's talent in his grace, his form, his speed. He just didn't run the same way the other little kids ran.

My point is that even a homogenous-seeming group of "typical boys" will have a lot of variation.

And when you get to the girls--whoa nelly! There are a number of girls in the Tiny Tornado's preschool class, who dress in conventional girl ways. But they don't really dress alike. There is one girl who likes nice dresses; she often shows up in a green velvety number with a satin sash. There are a couple of girls who have that "young fashion designer" vibe going--they're putting together funky and unexpected combinations of striped tights, bright colored skirts, shirts in colors that clash just a little bit. One of the girls likes to have interesting things on her head: sparkly head bands, heart-shaped doodle boppers. And there are several girls who always or nearly always, so far as I can tell, wear pants.

My best friends have a 5-year-old girl who will only ever wear dresses, and usually dressy ones rather than casual. One of her moms told me one time, "I just walk into the store and ask if they have anything glamorous in a size 5." She is the girliest girl that ever girled a girl (and, as an aside, though in general we find it appalling when people sexualize kids by talking about their "boyfriends" and "girlfriends," my friend and I cannot resist, when the Tiny Tornado and the Glamour Girl are playing together, characterizing them as the world's tiniest and most adorable butch-femme couple. Goddess forgive us).

My point is: these girls are not dupes. They are not weak. Unless their clothing choices are being coerced by their parents, which I know happens but I hope is rare, they are exercising their preferences just as much as the Tiny Torndao is. The Tiny Tornado isn't the only little kid with agency just because her agency is so visible in her unconventional choices. She didn't corner the market on preschool awesome. There's plenty of it to go around, and that long-haired girl with the Hello Kitty t-shirt and the twirly skirt and the shiny shoes by God got her share of it, and is putting it to work.

Possible, but not Easy

My new juggling balls arrived in the mail yesterday. I like them; they have a sueded finish and are very firm, and they're a good size for my hands. I am not very good at juggling, but Raider and I have recently moved the old juggling balls from our closet onto a shelf in the living room, and we have been practicing again. The kids are learning; The Lego Savant, who is almost 11, is working very hard on perfecting what we call the "one-ball jug," which is learning to reliably pass one ball from one hand to the other and back again, making a nice relaxed arc that crosses just in front of your eyes before it drops right into the waiting hand--it's less about catching than it is about aim, making tosses so accurate that your catching hand hardly needs to move and you don't have to think about it at all. When you can do this well with one ball, it's a surprisingly short step to doing it with three.

Raider can pick up the balls after months or years away and immediately start juggling, the balls going tock-tock-tock in a steady unbroken rhythm. Word Boy said the other day, "Daddy looks so relaxed when he's juggling," and it's true. The Lego Savant, watching me just now, said, "See, you make it look possible, but not easy. Dad makes it look easy." A very apt way to put it. [The Tiny Tornado said, "Mom, can I have some ice cream? Can I have some applesauce? With cinnamon on it? Can I get my own puppy? When I'm five? Can I have a skateboard? Can I take a bath? Can I help you cook dinner? Mom, these pants have a hole in them. You have to buy me some new pants. I want new shoes. I want flip-flops. Can we get some candy at the store?"]

Back when we had no kids, a lot more energy, and not one full-time job between us--and therefore all the time in the world to do anything we wanted--we juggled a lot. Raider taught me, and I got pretty good. Not as good as him. But good enough. We'd put on some music with a good beat and stand facing each other as we juggled in time to the beat. Michelle Shocked's old album Short Sharp Shocked has quite a few perfect juggling songs, and we often used that. Of course, it wasn't her "old" album back then.

Now, when you get into the groove with your juggling, it's like you slip into an alternate, slower timestream. Instead of scrambling to pluck each ball out of the air before it falls, your hand has to wait for it to fall effortlessly into your palm. You can feel the rhythm of it in your whole body. Your eyes focus somewhere in the distance; you're not looking at the balls, just seeing them as blurs in your near vision while you take in the view out the window. You start to have time to fill. You can walk; you can talk; you can toss one ball up as high as you can; you can start making smaller, lower arcs so the balls pass faster and faster, and then you can slow it back down again; you can start throwing the balls so they go outside each other's paths instead of inside them.

Raider and I used to focus on each other's eyes while we juggled. We still would, except that right now I can't keep the balls going long enough. He stands there, juggling steadily, while I juggle a little, drop a little, chase my balls around. Part of why we're practicing is because I'd like to do this again. It's surprisingly intense juggling in time while looking into someone's eyes. Many years ago, our friend Adrianne was watching us. "Jeez, you guys," she said after a couple of minutes. "Get a room!

We used to be able to do tricks together, stealing balls from each other or passing them back and forth. Sometimes you can throw a fourth ball to Raider and he will just grab it out of the air and boom! He's juggling four.

Juggling is a good thing to learn if you need to practice making mistakes. Because everyone drops balls. Even Raider, though not very often. When I was learning, sometimes I'd drop a ball and that was OK. Sometimes I would drop two, and Raider would say, "Double drop! Impressive." Sometimes I would drop all three, and he'd throw his hands in the air in mock triumph: "It's a triple drop! Yay, Su!" Now we cheer for the children. They don't find it quite as funny as I did.

Just now I was juggling--making it look possible, as the Lego Savant says, which is actually an improvement from just a few days ago when the sound of my balls hitting the hardwood floor was like a steady artillery bombardment. For a minute or two, I crossed into that other time stream. For about fifteen minutes, I juggled, passing in and out of it, clumsy to graceful and back again, with the Tiny Tornado's endless string of chatter fading into a steady buzz in the back of my mind. "Mom, do monkeys have bones? When I'm five, will my teeth start falling out? Is there much blood when your tooth falls out? How old do I have to be to drive a car? Is driving a car fun? Will you make my dog an eye patch? Aargh, matey! I think my fever's coming back. I'll get the thermometer. Can we have dutch baby for dinner? Do you have enough dollars for me to get a skateboard?"

I had forgotten that the peaceful rhythm of juggling is also a meditative path to serenity. I shall have to try not to forget again.

Book Report: Lego, A Love Story

I read Lego: A Love Story the other day. It's one of those stunty journalistic books writers pitch to publishers: Jonathan Bender decided to spend a year learning to build with Lego and exploring the world of AFOLs, or Adult Fans of Lego, and somebody gave him an advance and a book contract to do it.

I found the book kind of annoying at times, even though I knew that was unfair. Bender and his wife were trying to conceive during the research for the book, so he hadn't had my experience of becoming a de facto Lego expert because the kids have dragged me, willy nilly, along with them. And he hadn't played with Lego since he was a kid. But even recognizing that I have been steeped in Lego for at least the last seven years and Bender has not, I could not keep myself from rolling my eyes sometimes at his ignorance. For instance, he thought someone was pulling his leg when they told him that Lego makes brick separators. Tyro!

And, I am sorry to say that Bender is not much of a writer. Competent, but pedestrian.

Still, the book was fun. I like reading about quirky subcultures, and AFOLs certainly qualify. I am amused by the kinds of things people get worked up over, like a turn-of-the century change in some of the standard colors that resulted in new bricks not perfectly matching old bricks; in particular, the new gray brick, which was perceived to have a bluish tinge, was much reviled. If you mention the color "bley" to an AFOL, they will know what you're talking about. And they'll probably have an opinion.

Other favorite controversies include the divide between purists, who believe in building only with genuine unmodified Lego pieces, and those who are willing to tinker to achieve their vision. Bender tells one story of a builder cutting a brick in half to get the right size, and there are some very spiffy custom minifig decals floating around out there. Here's a guide to customizing your own minifig, in case you're so inclined.

Possibly my favorite thing that AFOLs get worked up about is a recent Lego innovation in which the bags of pieces in large building sets are numbered, and the instructions suggest you open only one at a time and don't mix them. This is seen as patronizing, as reflecting a continuing tendency of the Lego company to pander to juveniles while ignoring adult fans (a toy company focusing on children! The nerve!). Some, at least, also see it as an unwarranted intrusion into the builder's process. "Who are they to tell me how I sort my bricks?" one AFOL is quoted as saying. Who indeed?

The book makes me really want to visit a Lego convention. I've thought for a long time of taking the kids to BrickWorld in Chicago to visit the exhibition halls, but after reading about Bender's experiences, I got a little itch to get a registration and experience the whole thing. They apparently do all kinds of fun contests, like "blind builds," where everyone has to build the same set while not being able to see the pieces, contests where people have to try to do something creative with a specific set, and "speed builds," which are exactly what they sound like. I was especially interested in the idea of "Building in the Bag," which is exactly what it says: building your Lego set without opening the plastic bag the pieces come in. Honestly, all the contests sounded like so much fun they made me want to organize a little mini-Lego convention for kids here in Lansing where we would do all these fun things (kids do not get Lego conventions. Lego conventions are for the big boys).

I read about the history of the Lego company, including its many ill-advised efforts to attract girls to the hobby by making things pink. And I learned all kinds of fancy AFOL jargon, like the "SNOT" building technique (Studs Not On Top), which results in a smooth finish.

I learned about the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum in Ohio, one man's labor of love in an old middle school, which isn't the Lego museum because he could never come to an agreement with the company about rights. But it's all Lego, baby, and I say: road trip!

At one point, Bender discusses Mega Bloks, the Canadian company that began to make Lego-compatible pieces after Lego's patent expired in 1988. Bender says that AFOLs are disdainful of Mega Bloks and won't use them, and that they're frustrated by trying to buy brick lots on, say, eBay, because casual users often let their Mega Bloks and Lego intermingle and then sell them all as Lego. Even after he's spent a year building (and dutifully purged his collection of Mega Bloks), Bender still sees this as simply a preference, or as a snobby in-group thing. "It's the Coke vs. Pepsi of the Lego world," he says.

He is wrong. I say he is wrong, David agrees, and Eric, when I told him what Bender said, vehemently said that he is wrong. I wonder how many AFOLs have written to Bender to tell him he is wrong? Probably hundreds. I'm tempted to drop him a note myself.

Mega Blok simply doesn't have Lego's quality control. We have never had a Lego set we couldn't build, but when we have made the occasional foray into the world of Mega Blok, we routinely came up against bricks that simply would not stay together the way the instructions claim they will. Even though Mega Blok sometimes has cool licenses (I think it was their Halo license that attracted Eric the last time), we decided not to buy any more. They're a little cheaper than Lego, but a lot crappier. Stick with the Danes, that's what we say.

I think that, although I almost never build on my own (I'm the brick-finding helper most of the time), I am an AFOL anyway. Because what Lego does for the kids who love it is amazing, and what the kids do with Lego is amazing. I find myself fearing and dreading what AFOLs call "the dark ages," the years between about 12 or 13, when kids lose interest in Lego, and the time when they (maybe) come back to it as adults. It's hard to imagine Eric, whose bedroom is practically a Lego museum, packing it all away. That will be a sad day and the end of an era. But, like the dutiful Lego mom I am, I'll keep the boxes. "For the grandkids," I'll say. But I'll be thinking, maybe for him, too.

I Have Surprisingly Strong Opinions About a Lot of Things. Here's One.

Parenting leads to some unexpected places. For instance, I have surprisingly strong opinions about the theme music for children's TV shows. Here is one of the best: the theme for Dragon Hunters. It's by
The Cure, so you know it's good.

I also love the quirky little tune that starts Adventure Time, a quirky little show that I am pretty sure is not actually appropriate for children.

Another song I will stop and listen to every time? The Johnny Test theme. I love this song. The boy's best friend is a talkin' dog!

I also stop and listen every time the Max & Ruby theme comes on. Mostly so I can say in disgust, "Did someone get paid to write those lyrics?" To wit: "Max and Ruby. Ruby and Max. Max and Ruby. Ruby...and her little brother Max!" Aargh!

I do think there's a correlation between the theme song and the show; if I like the theme song, I probably also like the show, though the kids might not. Nobody is watching Adventure Time around here, for instance. On the other hand, if the theme song makes me want to stab my ears with chopsticks, the show will probably make me crazy (but one of the kids might well love it). Yehva was a big fan of Max & Ruby for awhile. I endured. I will always love what stark. raving. mad. mommy. had to say about certain children's shows.

[Update: I'm checking my links, and get to the Max & Ruby one. Eric says, "Why would you even listen to this? It's terrible. But it's not as bad as the Caillou one." I say, "I don't know the Caillou one," and start a youtube search. David says, "I guess it's unmemorable," and then, as the music starts, "Oh, God, no! It's horrible! Ah!"

They Build Things

Back when I was in literary studies, we used to use the term "overdetermination" to mean that a text was making too much of something, asking us so excessively to believe something that we became inclined to believe the opposite. Shakespeare understood the notion; he wrote, "the lady doth protest too much," meaning that only someone in love would feel the need to say so very many times and in so very many ways that she was not in love.

It's also possible to overdetermine something in such a way that only one outcome is possible. So you get English grad students sitting around with a book written by someone twice as smart as they will ever be, sneering, "I don't know, I thought the climactic saber fight was a little overdetermined, you know what I mean?"

Sometimes I think we have overdetermined our children.

I come from families of men who work with their hands. My dad built the house I grew up in, literally; my brother has built a dune buggy from scratch, and a race car out of a car that had not previously been a race car. When my brother wanted a minibike as a kid, nobody bought him one. My dad and grandpa built him one out of old lawnmower motors and steel bars they had lying around, which they welded into a frame. My extended family on both sides is full of people who fix their own cars, and make their living repairing or maintaining machines or structures.

David is not that kind of guy, and wasn't raised by that kind of guy. His dad was a surveyor, but for recreation, he played competitive bridge. David was not raised to think it's a moral failing to hire someone to do a job you could just as well do yourself, like replacing an engine block or adding a porch to the front of the house or re-wiring the guest bathroom.

Still, David's a very smart guy, and an engineer in his way: he is a software engineer. So when we needed donor sperm to have our first two kids, we looked for somebody smart and with a logical mind. There weren't any software engineers in the catalog, but there was a guy who was a mechanical engineering graduate student with a 3.85 gpa. "Smart!" we said. "A logical thinker!" we said, and ordered three little vials.

Imagine our surprise when our firstborn turned out to be the kind of person who can make anything out of anything--put him in front of any material that can be manipulated in three dimensions, whether Lego, modeling clay, or leftover forks, and he'll build something amazing. All those three-dimensional-thinking and doing-stuff-with-your-hands genes are just a little overdetermined, I sometimes think. Like we doomed him to a career in engineering or the skilled trades, like we left him with not really all that many choices. "Maybe we should have chosen a sensitive poet," we joke sometimes.

It's not really like that, though--Carl seems to have gotten the ear-for-language genes that also run in my family; while Eric was amazing us at 4 with his fork sculptures, Carl was astonishing us with his observations and questions about language. Why was one word used, and not another? "I think you meant to say both, not all," he'll tell us. Or he'll point out that two lines in a picture book don't really quite rhyme.

And yet Carl is also a builder. I know that having Lego-obsessed boys is about as common as breathing, but both of my boys have the bug pretty bad, even so.

But many of my friends have heard me talk about this before. What has me thinking about it again is seeing how Yehva fits in. And she does. She loves to do Lego with the boys, and the other day produced something so cool I made the classic parenting blunder of saying, "That's really great! Did somebody help you with it?" (She was offended, as she should have been.) When we toured her preschool last fall, the director commented on Yehva's tendency to gravitate toward technology in every classroom or storage room we entered: the computer, the toy cash-register, the tool bench. It feels like a little spark I want to nurture in her, though really the boys are doing that job for me. I find myself glad she has them, and that they let her tag along sometimes when they've got a project going.

She's only three. Anything could happen. I'm just having fun watching it unfold.

FGC First-Timer's Tips for Parents

Last year, a couple of moms from my monthly meeting went to FGC Gathering with their kids for the first time. I take my kids most years, and these moms kept saying to me, tiredly, "How do you do this?" and suggesting I write up tips telling moms how to make it look easy and fun, like I apparently do. This year, the Gathering is a mere two hours from us, and I hope and expect more families will take advantage of that to attend, so I thought I maybe I would try to write something.

Sadly, I'm not sure that what works for me and my kids, and makes Gathering one of our favorite parts of the year, applies to anyone else. For instance, I had attended Yearly Meeting, FGC Gathering, and FLGBTQC events for years before I started having kids. This meant that by the time Eric and I attended Gathering together when he was about 14 months old, I had many friends and acquaintances. For me, having lots of people to say hello to, even just passing on the path, means I don't end up feeling isolated because caring for kids keeps me away from some activities.

Having attended in the past means that not only do you know people, but you know the Gathering, its basic offerings and schedule, and don't have to waste energy on figuring out how it works. Your kids, having been there several times, also know the check-in routine, and they know how much they have to look forward to, which makes the dull arrival-check-in-and-unpacking part more manageable for them. So my first piece of advice would be, "Go back in time and attend on your own a half-dozen times first; it really helps."

If that's not practical, there are usually many Red Cedar Friends around. So the first piece of advice I would give any parent attending for this first time is: Don't be afraid to ask for help. People from my meeting have sometimes watched my kids for an hour or two so I can grab a nap, or helped the kids fetch their food at meals (the cafeteria can be the most challenging part of the Gathering), or invited my kids to their table so I can eat my lunch in peace.

I have gotten so good at asking for help that, especially in the cafeteria, I have almost no qualms about asking complete strangers for small favors. Friendly strangers have refilled our drink glasses, sat with one kid while I ran another to the bathroom, and bussed our table. Usually they seem happy to be asked, and to help. Only once did the person I asked seem the least bit taken aback, but even that person collected himself and said he was more than happy.

I had to learn the asking-for-help lesson the hard way over several years--I used to be so invested in seeming capable I would say "No, thank you" even when I was juggling two cafeteria trays, my toddler had just disappeared behind the drinks station, and my older kid was sitting cross-legged in the line of traffic declaring that he would not eat anything at all if they didn't have grilled cheese sandwiches. The day Carl threw up on me in a very crowded and public place got me over my misplaced sense of self-sufficiency, but you don't need to wait for that extreme. Don't make things harder for yourself than they have to be, please. Ask for help with small things before you even think you need it, and it will help preserve your energy and sanity.

You will be housed near other families with kids, and can request to be near families you know from home. Even if you don't know the parents nearby, be friendly and get to know them. Leave the door to your room open and say hello when they pass by. If you and your kids are going out to ride bikes or throw a ball around after lunch, invite the kids from down the hall, too. Then, when that family is playing frisbee the next day, they'll invite your kids, and you can have a little quiet, or take a nap.

My third piece of advice would be to take your kids' needs, and yours, seriously. Until this last year, we missed a lot of activities because too much time with people can just be overwhelming for Eric the Introvert, and so we usually chose to spend our afternoons either quietly in our room or doing something together just as a family, like taking a walk or riding bikes. We missed out on Family Center activities like story time, we never got to play capture the flag, and we've never been on a field trip. But we didn't go insane from over-scheduling, which is important for us. (Last year, eight-year-old Eric surprised me by being much better able to handle the groups, and choosing to spend even our available free time with his friends instead of having down time.)

We also usually prioritize getting enough sleep, which means that no matter how interested I am in the plenaries, I probably can't hope to get to more than one, or at the very most two. This was true even before I had kids, and is even more true now that I do.

I'm also the person who, last year, rolled my own fridge into the dorm on a hand truck, and I'll do it again this year, because being able to have an occasional lunch in our room instead of going to the cafeteria can give us a really welcome break. This is how seriously I take the idea of making sure we can get our needs met. (Also, having a cold can of sparkling water to offer other moms near the end of the their rope does wonders for building relationships.)

My third piece of advice applies to anyone, really, and it is: Accept that you can't do everything. There is great stuff happening at the Gathering starting with 7 a.m. yoga and ending with contra dancing until midnight. It helps me to start thinking even before I arrive about what I want to prioritize. This year, I'm leading a workshop, so being fresh for that is important, and that probably means no late nights. There's a field trip I'd like to take the kids on, so that may mean planning a quiet afternoon the day before so they're up for it. I used to try always to attend FLGBTQC worship, but it ends at 5:30. Last summer I discovered that if the kids and I go to dinner when the cafeteria first opens at 5, it's much less crowded and we cope much better. (Not everyone is as bothered by the cafeteria as we are; as a group, we're awfully sensitive to noise and crowds.) So getting to the cafeteria at 5 became a higher priority for me than worship, at least on most days.

My fourth piece of advice is to not be too discouraged by the rough moments. I have learned, from many years now of traveling with my kids to the yearly meeting, FLGBTQC Midwinters, and the summer gathering, that a low point for me is right after arrival time, when the kids are wired and wild from being in the car, and I'm worn out from driving, and the unloading seems impossible. It is very common for me to think, "Why did we come? This is not going to be any fun at all. I don't know why I put us through this year after year." Your moments of discouragement may be different, but it's a long conference and there are likely to be low points. Don't make too much of them, and ask for help when they come along.

Just in case anybody thinks I'm super-good at this and never lose it, I'll tell a story from the Gathering in 2008. Yehva was not quite a year old, and it was my first Gathering with all three kids. The cafeteria at that Gathering was the worst ever in terms of crowding, noise, and horrible traffic flow between the six different stations you had to go to for the various parts of your meal (I saw a woman from my meeting who didn't even have kids almost reduced to tears by that cafeteria, if that tells you anything). In addition, I'd injured my knee and couldn't walk distances. Was that also the year I'd had emergency oral surgery the day before we left? Yes, I think it was. So...challenging.

The dorm they put FLGBTQC folks in was charming--one of the best we've had for group hanging-out space close to the bedrooms, so parents could put kids to bed and then go down and visit with grownups. But the walls were like paper--you could hear conversations two rooms away as if the people were standing next to you. Since all the families with kids were in one hallway, this made getting your kids settled challenging.

One day, about halfway through the week, I was trying to do something impossible like get Yehva down for a nap, and Eric was "stuck." When Eric gets stuck, it means that none of the available options are acceptable to him, and he can't accept new ideas. He has lost all flexibility and is demanding, loud, whiny, weepy. I was tired, cranky, out of clever peaceful parenting ideas, and right on the verge of losing it, when there was a knock on our door. It was our friend Jude, from a few rooms down the hall. "Hi!" she said. "The girls and I were just thinking of taking a walk and wondered if Eric and Carl wanted to come with us!" "Yes! Yes, they do!" I said, and pushed them firmly out the door.

I don't know for sure whether Jude and her daughters were really just thinking of going for a walk and thought the boys might like to go along, or whether she heard the escalating noise and thought, "I'd better get in there right now, or Su's going to end up smacking one of those kids," but either way, she saved me from a regrettable thing. Single-parenting your kids at the Gathering is not the easiest thing you'll ever do, perhaps. But, for us, it's always been worth it, and we always want to go back.

Which brings me to my final piece of advice: Make a habit of it if you can. For me, the Gathering got better and better the more times I went; my first Gathering was only OK, and wouldn't have been compelling to me if I hadn't happened to be in a workshop that was a very good fit for me and from which I was learning many exciting new things. But over the years, for me, more and more pieces of it are worthwhile. Two years ago was the first time I had a workshop that just didn't speak to me, but it was more than made up for by the great time I had with kids that year (not just my own), and with my adult friends, and singing Sacred Harp.

For the boys, too, attending over the years has made the Gathering better. They are used to the things that are hard or tiring about it, and ever-more-excited about the stuff they like. They have old friends both among the adults and the kids, though especially among the kids, and both Carl and Eric will talk excitedly about looking forward to seeing certain friends again.

I know the Gathering is expensive; if it weren't so close to home, and if I weren't getting a cost reduction for leading a workshop, and if my Quaker meeting weren't contributing $720 for my kids to attend, we wouldn't be able to go this year. We'd go a lot less often if I weren't a stay-at-home mom, but had a job with limited vacation time, or if we had family out-of-state and needed to save vacation time and money for visiting them, as I know some families in our meeting do.

But it is worth it, in my experience. As well as deepening your own relationship to Quakerism, exposing you to Quakers from outside your own monthly meeting with all their quirks and different points of view, and giving you the opportunity to get together with possibly the only 12 liberal unprogrammed Friends who share some interest or concern with you, getting your children out into the wider Quaker world can be life-changing for them.

Edited to add:

Don't be shy about asking for financial help. Even though FGC does everything they can to keep costs down, like offering a family rate for registrations, letting the little kids eat for free, this year even experimenting with making the Gathering one day shorter, the cost really adds up. Your monthly meeting may have travel funds, and FGC offers scholarship assistance. The last couple of years, our family has been experiencing tight cash flow, and we've been helped by FGC scholarship funds. Don't be shy about asking for it; that's what it's there for. Someday when you have a little extra, you can offer it to the scholarship fund as a contribution when you register. This year, I didn't need to ask for scholarship help; next year, I hope we can contribute a little to the fund when we register.