Only Sometimes Clever

Our fourth child, who will be six months old on Friday, is a darling little girl.  Our first three are boys — dear, spunky, stubborn, squabbly, perpetually dirty, messy boys. 

Many assumed that my pregnancy was

• an accident, or
• we were trying for a girl. 

It was neither.  We were trying for a baby.  And we got one.    Frankly, though, since I had three boys, and my brother has three boys, and my husband has three brothers, I thought maybe girls just weren’t in the genes.  At the ultrasound, when we found out, I was shocked, and my dh cried tears of joy.

Given the nature of my morning sickness, I had been thinking that I was perhaps carrying a girl, but until those moments, looking at the ultrasound screen, we didn’t know for certain.

I spent the rest of the pregnancy *really* uncertain about being a mother to a girl.  Then, when little Audrey Sophia was born, I found out that it was easy, actually, and barring physiological differences, and how we dressed her, it not all that different from mothering baby boys.

But now… the uncertainty is creeping back in.  Even in her bitsyness, she is showing really girly tendencies:  She happy-squeals, her voice is very feminine, she likes flowers and ribbons and sparkly things.  She shrugs her shoulder and shyly/coyly ducks her head for Daddy — Daddy alone.  IOW, her femininity is starting to reveal itself.

I was a tomboy.  A jeans-wearing, barefoot, sunburnt, competitive, dig-in-the-dirt, sports-playing, tree-climbing tomboy.  I played with Barbies until the age of 13, but that was about my singular really girl trait.  I never owned a doll, wore dresses only when I had to, and shunned wearing pink.

Looking back, I don’t know how much of that was nature, and how much “nurture,” or lack of it.  Femininity was scorned by my parents, or at least my dad, as being unimportant and frivolous…  And frivolity was another name for… well, “evil” is too strong a word, but it was certainly not tolerated.  Beauty, loveliness, lady-likeness, sweetness, and tenderness were subjugated to the “more important” traits of intelligence and usefulness.  And, much as that lack in my childhood saddens me, what do I now tend to value?  Intelligence and usefulness.    <sigh>  It has been an adulthood-long struggle for me (though I’m only 33, so “adulthood” hasn’t been that long) to learn how to not be embarrassed by my femininity, to learn how to be gracious and tender, to learn to value simple classically womanly traits like relationship-building and… accessorizing. 

I find, creeping into my thoughts, the temptation to fear that I’m going to ruin the lovely femininity of my dear tiny daughter.

I’ve heard, many times, that I won’t have to teach my daughter how to be a girl;  she’ll just be one.  I’m just hoping (and praying) that my own history doesn’t mar my perspective of my daughter’s girliness.  I’m hoping I notice it, and value it, and encourage it in her.

God bless my little girl, and help me to be a good mom to her.