What Men Do Best
A man can sleep through anything when he wants to: Our little guys got up at 5:45 yesterday and crept into our bed, curling up on their sides to watch kid-healthy cartoons in the darkened room. Yet even those cartoons have loud soundtracks and then too I was standing on the bed to make this shot – AFTER having brought the two little ones bacon, cocoa and silver dollar pancakes, all of which orbited in a small busy cyclone of cups and mugs and dishes AND YET NOTHING WOKE MY MAN; he snoozed on.
Later he raked and weeded, even helped the little one twice with some bathroom issues so it’s not that he’s indolent or inactive. But for all the years I have lived with him I have never ceased to be amazed by all he can sleep through or ignore when it suits him. Men are just not like women and that’s the truth.
At the playground Friday too: a young dad there stood near me saying absolutely nothing as his little boy dug silently in the dirt. My boys did the same, wordlessly, purposefully propelling the toy earth movers.
“It’s amazing how boys are, isn't it?”I said to him. "If they were girls, these three would be talking away, sharing secrets and affirming each other but look at them!”
He only smiled a wan smile and kept silent. He was a young dad so who knows, maybe he thought I was sexist - some sexist older chick. All I know is if I had had little girls here all weekend they’d have been engaging in narrative the whole time and erecting gossamer pavilions out of the zillion silky scarves I’ve accrued over the years so they could crawl inside them and engage in more narrative.
These little grandsons of mine who are being raised up so gently with no guns, no toy weapons of any kind, not even any scorning, or using curse words like "shut up": even these boys I have heard say 100 times this weekend alone how they will confront their imaginary foes and "CUT THEIR HEADS OFF!" - that is, just as soon as they finish with these cartoons here and by the way, TT, is there any more cocoa in the kitchen?
