A Child's Truthiness

2BoyClub's story

July 30, 2007

When my son Paul was about three, we lived on an funky little dead-end street just outside New York City. There were only three homes on the street, one of them I lived in with my sister. In another lived my neighbor and friend Bea. Bea's husband was often gone and she had a live-in nanny to help her out with her son, who was Paul's age.

Once in a while, Bea and I would have a smoke on the porch while the kids napped or played on the swings, but mostly we were running after them or dashing off to work.

My parents didn't live far from me and would often visit. My father more often than my mother. He was retired, my mother still worked. Another sister would also come around with her infant son. Her husband was gone more than half the time on business.

Suffice it to say, there weren't a lot of men around. And family and friends seemed to have an explosion of male children around that time.

One day I could feel myself cracking. There was just too much to do, and too little time to do it in. I was about to lose it. In comes my little cherub Paul asking me for something or another. I picked him up for a minute to gather the strength to finish the day and started to quietly weep. I felt his little hand patting my back in comfort, as I had done to his many times. "Don't cry, Mommy," he said. "Only boys cry." Only boys cry? It took me a minute, but then I realized that all the boys in his life did cry: his brother, his best friend, his cousin. The nanny didn't cry, nor did my sister, or Bea, or me, (until then, but I soon found myself laughing).

When Paul observed a visiting brother of mine with a cigarette, he asked him why he would do that when only women smoked. He'd only observed Bea and me having the occasional smoke on the porch, never a man. Paul also thought that women were the only ones who worked.

He may not have technically reached the age of reason at that time, but I'd say Paul had a pretty good argument for what he saw as the truth.