Letting Go of my ‘Bambina’ Dreams
As a mother of boys I am fascinated by baby girls. I keep fantasizing about having a little girl with ribbons in her hair and bangles around her plumb hands. Somehow with all the high male energy in my house, I keep thinking that a little girl would introduce some peace and quiet. My cousin who is a mother of girls laughs at the notion, she claims that girls also have their own drama and are all not sugar and spice and all things nice.
I guess a major reason for this blues is the realisation that no matter how close my relationship with my boys, I can only influence them to a certain degree. It will never be my life they model their lives after. Tony is their role model. As they continue to grow and rush towards the teenage year, this truth becomes more and more apparent. Gone are the days when mom was synonymous to wisdom and the bearer of all solutions. As they embrace their masculinity, they crave more and more for daddy. Whereas I recognise this to be the natural progression of things and I acknowledge that there is no one better that they could emulate, I am also a little envious (okay maybe not so little).
It is funny really, on one hand I am relieved that I have more time on my hands to do with as I deem fit yet on the other, I keenly feel the exclusion as they engage on more male oriented activities like watching martial arts movies, discussing cars and going to the garage (all activities that I find mind numbingly boring). It is at those times that I fantasize of having a little girl that I can watch soapy love stories with, braid our hairs and cook with.
During more sober moments though I realise that every child goes through phases and that the reality is that even though I had a baby girl, she would be her own little person with individual likes and dislikes that would not be a mirror image of mine. It reminds me of my mother and me. Whereas we are really close at this stage of my life, our relationship was much more tumultuous as I grew up. We were like night and day in some things while quite similar in others. My mom’s idea of bonding with us when we were younger was to shell peas together or have our hairs done. To me this was a total waste of a great afternoon. Once I shaved off my hair to spite her. I had a friend cut it off with scissors and spent the afternoon playing hopscotch while my sister went through the rigor of hot combing and plaiting. I shudder to imagine my daughter doing the same thing to me.
I was daddy’s girl. Yet with time as I grew up, I gravitated more and more to my mom and by the time I had my own home we were the best of friends. I am still close to my dad, but there are things I tell only mom. My assumption is that being a woman like me, she will understand. I guess that is the same for my two boys. However great our relationship there are certain boy things only dad will get and so they go to dad for that. So I have decided that instead of moaning and wishing for a little girl, I will embrace this new stage and get a life. Who knows, maybe even a pet: a little puppy that I can teach to jump and do tricks. Problem is pets like children also grow.