Of pink shirts and mary janes

Scene one: It is morning, ninety minutes into our attempts to clothe the child and get ready for the day. We have achieved pants, and just managed to slip a grey shirt over his acquiescing but still squirmy head. And so, of course, he changes his mind, insists he needs to change his shirt. “I need flowers! I need the one with the flowers!” His voice is firm, his breath belabored, each word proclaimed as if inscribed in stone, hard at work as he always is when reaching to make each word just so, make sure he is understood. We ask him if he’s sure, verify his request and then again, and he is: there’s only one shirt with flowers, bright, dark, shockingly pink, and it’s getting too small for him, its sleeves, always abbreviated on his simian arms, now almost right again, falling halfway between his wrists and elbows, their fashion belied by the pooch of belly just sticking out from under the hem. Now he’s decided to cooperate, excited he’s gotten his flowers, he’s dressed in a snap, and runs off to play. I turn to his dad, both of us quirking our lips, and say, “I think we need to get him more shirts with flowers.” He nods, agreeing, and heads out after our pink-clad Boychick.

Scene two: I’m piled under papers, pen clenched absently between my teeth, flipping through the book balanced on my knee, looking for the piriformis, trying to ignore the near fetish-like way the anatomical illustrator sketches a circumcised penis into every portrayal of palpation around the thighs — my phone rings, I scramble. It is my love, out for a while, ostensibly to take the child shopping, really just to give me time to play catch up from my procrastination. “So it looks like he’s a size nine, and he’s really grown out of his current shoes, I can’t believe we waited so long. They have a bunch of sandals here, well, these are sort of sandals, but they have straps, and when I got him to put his foot up to see if they would fit, he shucked his shoes and insisted on putting these on. So what should I look for in shoes?” I take a deep breath, trying to drive away my discombobulation, but still thinking about piriformis and penis fetishists and how the hell am I going to get all this done in the next — calculating — four hours, and I babble something about looking for really flexible soles, something he can fold in half between finger and thumb, best for foot development, but my eye’s glancing back over the scattered papers, trying to sort my scattered mind. “I don’t think they have anything like that, but I’ll look. The ones he has are pretty flexible, and I’m not sure I can get them off him, to be honest.” If they’re cheap, I say, and he really wants them… “Alright. I’ll see. Either way, we’ll be home soon.” Then they are, and The Man is carrying his old shoes, and the Boychick is wearing his new, shiny, stiff-soled black ones. “Those are mary janes,” I say. “Are they? He really wanted them. He likes the flowers on the inside.” “Ah,” I nod, as I restack my shuffled papers, clearing my lap for my milk-demanding toddler, and wondering whether any of the flexible-sole shoe companies make shiny black mary janes and if they’d come in his size.

Denouement: I don’t much like pink; I’m not sure there is actually anything pink in my wardrobe. I wear plain brown Birkenstocks year-round, though I do own a pair of black slightly-heeled boots, faux-fur lined, remnants from living where there was real winter. I do enjoy flowers, but prefer them outside where they belong, and don’t distinguish much between the exotic beauty of an orchid and the everyday beauty of a dandelion. I wonder if I could accept a girlchild loving pink and flowers and patent leather mary janes, whether I am unknowingly pushing my boychild into defying gender norms to fulfill my own anti-patriarchal desires. But then I look at my child, dressed in a shark-covered blue hoodie, jeans with flowers around the waist, grey socks and his new shiny mary janes, tossing his babydoll and nursing his cheetah, and I think no, this is just who he is: for a while, just for now, just until his awareness of the outside world and its strictly-defined gender norms increases, he is simply a child, who likes pink and blue and flowers and fish and bugs and bows; he is simply himself; simply my Boychick.