One picture, two images

I never expected to have a boy.

I'm the oldest of three girls. My mom is one of three girls. Three of my four cousins on that side of the family are girls.

So when the doctor pointed out a penis in the fall of 2004, I was skeptical.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Look," interrupted Hubs, possessor of the sharp photographer's eyes. "That is definitely a penis.

A boy? I know nothing of boys. What happened to my Tootie's little sister?


My only experience with boys involved my stepson, and at the time, as a novice stepparent, I spent much of my time worrying that I had totally bungled things with him.

And then the E-man arrived, a happy-go-lucky little man who crawled into my lap, wrapped his grubby arms around my neck and said, "I yuv you, Mommy."

Suddenly, I was converted.

Last year, fellow Musing Mama Laurie Aucoin Kaiser wrote an essay about her two boys. It began:

Twelve-year-old boys make me want to cry. Not in that “I know they are making fun of me” way I felt when I was a pubescent girl, but rather as a glimpse into my not-so-distant future.

With their baggy pants and bored glances, their skateboards and their video games, they are the “big boys” my sons seem in awe of.

Boys as young as 9 or 10 sometimes hold this distinction, but it’s the 11- and 12-year-olds on the brink of adolescence who really get to me. I know that in a heartbeat Jacob and Sawyer will be among them.

OK, maybe such hand-wringing is a little premature; my boys haven’t even entered kindergarten yet. Jacob just turned 2 and Sawyer won’t be 4 until the end of May. However, the promise of pending adolescence is out there just waiting to grab my heart, so full of little boy wonder and love, and twist it in two.


By the time Laurie wrote this essay, my stepson had become a teenage boy -- a wild-haired boy who wore baggy pants and appeared permanently attached to a skateboard. So I winced when I read about her fears.

I looked at my toddler and tried to imagine him 10 years later, and ... well, yes. It wrenched my heart too.

Today, Hubs came home with this picture of my stepson and my toddler:



You'd think this image would make me cringe, anticipating the day when my baby man will don baggy jeans and let his hair grow wild like his older brother's...

... anticipating how the memory of his warm breath on my neck and a whispered, "I yuv you," will make me cry.

But when I look at this photo, I go back, not forward --

-- and I remember a long-ago night when we got caught in a frightening storm on the way home from a mountain cabin.

I remember an infant Tootie, strapped in her carseat, screaming.

And I remember turning around and seeing an 11-year-old boy -- the one who would one day wear baggy pants and let his dark, curly hair grow wild -- holding the wailing baby's tiny hand in his.

That is the image that makes me cry.