When I was pregnant with my first child I dreamt I was walking down Remsen Street in our pretty
Brooklyn neighborhood with a little girl. She was three or so years old, her hair dark like mine. And we
were holding hands. I will call her Isabel I thought when I woke up. My twenty-week sonogram
revealed the very first glimpses of my Jack, almost ten now but still that swimming back flipping baby
boy in spirit. My second child, our big surprise, made himself known with unrelenting nausea, which
convinced me my Isabella had arrived. Only this time she might even be named Tulsi, a sacred basil
plant in Southeast Asia. “Tulsi Rose” I said to husband. The rose after my beloved Aunt. “Oh no” he
cried. Won’t people misunderstand and think it’s one of those preppy names like Talbot or Dizzy. But
once again at twenty weeks we received a first glimpse of our second boy. “It’s William,” my husband
blurted out. William had been in the running with Jack, named after a long line of Johns and Jacks, and
Jacksons. I had grown fond of names like Holden and Dylan but my husband said he didn’t want him to
grow up to be a depressed teenager or a drunken poet.

I never saw myself as the mother of boys. It wasn’t that I wished for girls above boys, nothing like
that. I just saw myself as a keeper of the feminine. The place I would know best would be the
landscape of a little girl. I even read “Reviving Ophelia” when I was in my twenties because I always
saw myself as a mother of girls. I was not going to let my daughters fall pray to the myriad of self
esteem and body image issues that were so prevalent in my younger years. But even through all of that
I was surrounded by a crew of girlfriends that were smart, creative and remain some of the best people I
know in the world.

I might have been a bit tomboyish, but never one of those girls whose closest friends were always boys,
I never even trusted those girls. I had never ever watched a football game until I met my
husband. And I still don’t have the patience for all that bullying in the name sport.

Such is my life surrounded by men. Just weeks ago I horrified my oldest when after I took him to get his
hair cut, I suggested we go shopping at Castle House. I have to serenade my nieces with those
fantasies. It’s my only hope I suppose.

But then there are the moments driving home from school where Jack asks me “why it means a girl likes
you if she won’t talk to you, but then you see her look at you sometimes.” I am glad that I am driving,
facing forward so that he can’t see my face contort into strange shapes so I remain completely
composed. And then there is William who at four, wants to know what happened to my penis. “It must
be somewhere,” he says.

Through all the hilarity that goes with mothering my boys, and it’s been quite a bit as I am now in my
tenth year, there is this light, this effervescent light that morphs from golden rod yellow to sunset orange
glow. It has become the beacon by which I must work hard to set new standards for myself each
day. Because when I see glimpses of the grief present in this world, I know I must raise my boys to
lessen that grief, not add to it. Men of my generation have been permitted far more license to not yield
to the imbalanced standards of masculinity. Those standards that lead us into wars and genocide, and
the suppression of woman in countless ways. It’s a tall order when I put it that way, but a slow steady
diet of exposure and example can work wonders. I have to believe that.

I may not toss a ball with the precision Daddy can, but I can teach them a mean downward dog. And
hopefully a little more, than that. Hopefully I can show them to be kind is not a weakness; to be
compassionate is where they will find great strength. When they are hurting, may they see it as a time
to give. And to love the world could be the bravest they will ever do.