Today Isaac lifted a piece of sidewalk chalk out of the bucket and exclaimed, “Pink is my best!” Yes, pink is now his favorite color. I mentioned this to his 94-year-old great-grandmother and she replied, “Then he should have pink pajamas.” This is good idea. I ordered him some. But what he really wants is pink shoes. I was looking at this web site preschoolians to buy him some fall shoes recently (the innovation they have is that they have a clear window in the sole of the shoe, so you can see how the tiny feet fit for sure– having heard more than one story of a little person whose feet were curled under and crushed and yet did not say so, this seems like a good idea) and I thought I’d ask him for input about the style. I was looking at the navy ones, with or without a running shoe look, or with or without red trim. Isaac sat on my lap and looked at the options. shortly he fixated on a pair of basically light brown shoes with lots of pink trim and detailing on them.
“Pink ones! Pink is my best!” he said excitedly. So I said, “Hmm… how about these?” showing some very handsome red ones.
“NOOOO! No! Those! Pink! My best!”
I set the topic aside without comment to consider how I felt about this. Do I care if he wants pink shoes? Why or why not? Would it be a nuisance to have everyone in the grocery store thinking he was a girl? Would it bother HIM? Would he be teased? Even though he’s three? What about the whole Free-to-Be-You-and-Me gender equality thing I was reared on? “William Wants a Doll!” comes to mind– and of course the point of that was that there was no reason whatsoever that William should not have a doll. (Isaac does have a wonderful doll…) So I mentioned to Ben, “Isaac wants pink shoes.” To which Ben’s reply was swift and unequivocal: “No.”
I polled other mothers. “What would you do if your son wanted pink shoes?” I asked. All of them said calmly, “Oh… sure. Why not? The kid is three.”
Another mom went a step further, saying, “The more you say no to something, the more they want it. I would say if he wants pink shoes it will be better to have him wearing them now than when he’s sixteen.”
And excellent point, I thought. Also I thought about John Gotti, the teflon don. He always wore those pink shirts, because he was a cold blooded mobster and no one really dared question his manliness. In fact he was secure enough in his masculinity to pull of the pink shirts and make them look downright tough. Isaac is, everyone tells me, “All Boy.” I think he could pull off the shoes with aplomb.
But my polling of local dads was equally uniform.
Dad # 1: “Hmmm… no.”
dad #2: “Um… well… no.”
dad # 3: “Uh, that would be a NO.”
Dad # 4: “No way.”
etc.
So … and this is still pending… what I did was order the navy and red ones that I truly thought would be best all told, and avoid controversy. But the test is, when I take them out of the box, will Isaac wail and scream, “MYYY PIIIINK ONES!!!” Or will he forget the whole conversation? If he does wail and scream, how will I reconcile this with Ben? Will I send them back and get the pink ones? I don’t know. My plan is that he will like the shoes and will forget the whole thing. And I did buy him the pink pajamas, a fine way for him to express his love of pink within the safe and non-judgemental confines of the house.
Tonight he asked why I get to paint my toenails and why he doesn’t. (It’s not so much that he doesn’t get to. It’s just frowned upon. But maybe we’ll do it anyway– I don’t know. Should I guide him in the gender norms or shield him from them?)
Meanwhile, he’s been watching this “Bill Nye the Science Guy” PBS science show fairly continuously, as much as the very limits of what he is allowed to do. He keeps talking about the stars. Specifically, he says, “Maybe a star burned out and collapsed.” And I say, “Yeah, maybe so… and still the light keeps coming here.” And he says, “Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe a star burned out and collapsed! And the light keeps coming anyway for years and years. Stars are VERY FAR away.”
“Yeah– I know! That’s pretty neat isn’t it?”
“I like stars don’t I?”
“You seem to!”
“Why do we live in our solar system?”
Ah, well.
So many imponderable questions. “Why is heat hot?”; “Why do we live on earth?” and yesterday in the car, “Why are we diurnal?”
Well– at least SOME of us are. Isaac I realized recently is a perfect blending of Ben and me. I’m a night owl. Ben is an early bird. Isaac is both.
Last week he was asking not so much what does noctural mean, but WHY are creatures noctural. A few days ago we reviewed what diurnal means (sleeping during the night and being away in the day), and now we’re trying to grapple with WHY are we diurnal. I can only expect that the crepusculars (awake mostly at dawn and dusk) are not far behind.
Meanwhile, his love of backhoes has not dimmed. We nearly had a knee-high brawl on our hands at the playground yesterday, when Isaac encountered another three-year-old boy as insanely passionate about backhoes as he is. The problem: there was only one backhoe. Although this backhoe lives at the playground, Isaac’s relationship with it goes way deeper than anyone else understands. He LOVES that backhoe– and not just when it’s in view. He THINKS about the backhoe day and night. He feels that it’s really his backhoe and just for some reason he can’t have it at his house and has to visit it there. (I’ve tried hard to clarify…) Imagine his anguish when he walked up and found someone else playing with it. And that the other boy had it first! And that I said the other boy could have a turn! So after some intense strife, I had to haul Isaac away in full-blown tantrum mode. Kicking and screaming bloody murder. Luckily the jaded parents at the playground barely batted an eye at this, only looked up briefly to see whether or not he was mortally wounded. We regrouped with a brief picnic in the car. A juice box, some crackers, and a discussion: how to share. When he was fully calm again, we went back into the sandbox situation to test our new sharing skills. Amazingly he did really well. This time a little girl was engrossed in the backhoe amd Isaac waited. He waited and waited very patiently. Then the girl’s parents started calling her, “Alexa! time to go! Gotta go to ballet class now!” and she ignored them. This went on for a while, until finally Isaac decided to help. Using his best imitation of an adult talking sweetly to a small child, he bent down and said, “Time to go to your mom now! Gotta go!” We all laughed, but still the girl played on, deaf to all pleas to wind it up. Finally the backhoe had to be pried forceably out of her claw-like little hands, and Isaac got possession at last. “I waited!” he said proudly. I said, “I know!! You were so good! I saw you waiting and waiting!” I gave him lots of hugs and we slapped five.
Then of course the inevitable happened– another kid showed up who looked with interest at the precious backhoe. Isaac intervened quickly, stepping between the kid and the backhoe and offering up a pretty nice dump truck. “Kid,” he said firmly. “play with this dump truck!” The kid looked at it and said, “Why?” but then scanned the situation a little bit and said, “Okay.” They sat down and played in peace.