MISSING SOME THINGS

As I sit here, tickled to death watching Isaiah's complete re-enactment of winning his first touch down yesterday, I am also a little sad and feeling a touch guilty.  I missed it.  I missed the football game for a bloggers conference I attended this weekend (Blogalicious '09).  It was a fabulous conference.  I learned a lot about social media and now have a very long to-do list.  The wealth of conference swag and the parties (especially the one put on by the Blog Rollers) was awesome, haven't danced like that in a while. And India Arie made a very quick cameo appearance at the party--SO COOL.  And I met Denene Miller and Nelson George--two writers whose work I deeply admire.  Wait...what was I saying? Oh yeah....my wonderful, amazing son ran his very first touch down and his mommy wasn't there.  I know that there will be many other firsts but I really hated that I missed this one. 

I am a working mother.  I have to work. I am single so of course mine is the only income coming into this house.  (So unless you want to share with me next week's Mega Millions numbers--don't judge me okay?)  I was working when he took his very first steps (again gleefully re-enacted when I picked him up from day care.)  I cried of course, cause I'm a sappy mom who tears up over things like that.  I know it seems strange, but in a way, being a working mother makes me more conscience of the time I spend with him and making it count.  I can't always volunteer for all the school trips or serve on the PTA board but I can and do make his Halloween costumes, his birthday cakes, and am there for many, many other firsts.  Now I have to go.  Isaiah's having a fake wrestling match with some pillows and I have to play the "announcer". 

The Meltdown

Okay….so the teacher just called to say that Isaiah was basically having a meltdown in class today. I myself could hear the screaming in the background. Not sure what set him off, but it made me kind of wonder if I do enough to help him understand and deal with his negative emotions in a positive way.

When a kid throws a tantrum so-to-speak like that it means that there is pent up anger and frustration that they don’t know how to properly express. I wonder if that’s my fault or is this just normal for a little kid who’s trying to deal in the world. I mean adults take prescription meds when they have difficulty coping. Also I'm a little freaked because I wonder if he's going to be overly emotional because he's being raised by a woman. And I'm also afraid that the tantrums will escalate into something more serious, the kind of acting out that's more serious. Advice please… help!

The Disconnects (Part 1)

When Isaiah was about three, I learned that there were many things that as a boy I would just NOT get about him. For instance I had to learn how to play with him. I had just gotten him a new wooden train set for Christmas and I was helping him set it up. It took forever, but we did it. I set up the little village and the complicated bridge. I sat back and admired my work, truly satisfied. That's when he took his plastic airplane and crashed it right into the bridge, leaving half the set sprawled across the floor. I was flabbergasted. Why did he just destroy the nice, perfectly set up trainset. Boys, I thought, always gotta be tearing something up.

It was about a week later that I got my answer. From the radio of all places, a local personality (Frank Ski-V103) was talking about how boys play and mentioned that the purpose of doing things like crashing the trainset or building blocks is to set it back up again. I could only laugh. As a girl of course I wanted everything to be nice and neat and pretty. As a boy he just wanted to break it all down so he could build it up again. That's just one of many examples of the gender disconnects Isaiah and I have had over the years. As I struggle to understand him (through our time together or from the insight of the other men in his life), I wonder if in doing so I understand myself better and vice versa. Much of what I've learned about little boys having come from my son, then much of what he learns about women comes from me. Which makes me wonder, how much of how men learn to connect with women emotionally comes from their relationships with their mothers?