Where is My Pretty Princess Dress?

I always loved the color pink, soft things and the warm smell of vanilla on my wrist. That was years ago, when there was time to take long baths and my mousey looks were to blame for the groove in my worry stone. Back then I wasn’t going to have kids. I was going to remain the center of attention of whatever man would put me in the center of his. But if I accidentally did end up with kids, I would have just one. It would be a girl and I would dress her up in pink frothy dresses with starched bows in her hair. I would buy her a different doll for every day of the week and I would paint her room the same exact color as mine was when I was young. “Titty pink,” my Aunt Melba called it. You can’t get much more girlie than that.

My husband has brought this to my attention. We are sitting in the Hoover Met (I mean, Regions Park) in clear view of third base and had I known so many foul balls tend to lean this way I would have protested the decision to purchase these seats in the first place. It is the Southern League All-Star game, and I’m doing that helicopter parenting thing – hurling my body over my son’s skull every time a ball pops into the air and veers toward the stands. Truman pushes me away. He says he wants to catch the ball and I fear that if he did catch one of these zingers it likely would result in him losing an arm … at best.

There’s no pink here. Not one thread. Even I couldn’t contribute pink to this crowd because my darling son wanted me to wear “that pretty blue shirt, Mommy. The one with the peace sign. You are so pretty in that blue shirt, Mommy.” Tell me what mother would dress otherwise after a comment like that.

About this time last year we went to Disney World and my little boy rode all the rides he was tall enough to ride, grudgingly posed with Handy Manny and that lion from JoJo’s Circus, and had his face painted like a tiger (for $20!). Meanwhile, we tripped over tiny pretty princesses, those little girls with their hair piled high and shellacked with glittery spray to hold shimmering princess crowns. They were cloaked in sherbet-color, poufy gowns and carried wands and wore delicate slippers on their feet. Rick said that would have been my baby girl had my baby boy turned out to be one. But even then, I felt the same way then as I do now, sitting here just one row and some grass removed from third base and the imminent threat of head injury from flying balls. I would trade nothing for my beautiful Truman, not the muddy monster trucks in the family room or the crude talk of dirty underwear at the dinner table. We have one of those “all-boy” boys, and I cannot imagine myself with anything but. I have learned to watch Nascar, that the quarterback only plays for part of the game, and to always check the toilet seat before sitting. I can handle the smell of sandals-gone-bad (to a point), and have given up on ever painting a room titty pink again.

Sharon O’Donnell, author of House of Testerone: One Mom’s Survival in a Household of Males and keeper of the Web site www.MomsOfBoys.org, says, “Since there is strength in numbers in fighting the effects of testosterone in a household, it’s time for mothers of boys to unite!”

So I am proudly uniting with other moms-of-boys … and this sorority of women marked by cleats in car trunks and jerseys in closets. And I’m can definitely say I’m damn glad to be here.