Day: July 1, 2007

Are my boys like me? It is so easy for me to see how my daughters are similar. Why is it so much harder to tell with the boys?

I know they both share my ability to focus so hard that we tune out everything else. I often have to work hard to get their attention. They often have to work hard to get mine. We love puzzles. I used to spend hours putting together jigsaw puzzles, my boys love this as well. There are certain kinds of logic puzzles that also intrigue me.

My boys have an innate affinity for math, which I do not share. I’ve learned to live with and even enjoy math, but it is not instinctual for me. My boys love stories. Link likes to be told stories, but does not tend to tell them. Patches is a storyteller in the making. He loves stories and words and sounds. He has just discovered rhymes and is starting to make them spontaneously. Right now of all my kids I think he is the most likely to become a writer/storyteller.

Link may choose to be an artist. He already has the capability to draw what he sees. He did a free-hand drawing of bugs bunny that was amazing for a child his age with no formal training.

Both of my boys have the same restless, creative spirit that I have. They must always be doing something. Usually the “something” takes the form of video games.

My two daughters are very different individuals and yet they are both like me. For a long time it puzzled me how this could be true. I finally figured it out. Kiki is more like me as I am now. Gleek is more like me as I was in my childhood.

Kiki and I are both very organizational. We love to dive in and create order out of chaos. Neither of us is particularly good at maintaining the order we’ve created. However I was not organized as a child and Kiki has always been organized. This probably means that as an adult she will figure out how to stay organized. This makes me glad because once she has figured it out, perhaps she can teach me. Kiki and I are very empathetic. We can both see how the other person feels and we can generalize from a small experience to a large one. We are both creative and artistic. Neither of us is particularly interested in wearing make up except for special occasions.

Kiki is much more dramatic than I am. She is much more of a perfectionist. I usually say “good enough” and she gets upset because it isn’t right. The perfectionism probably comes from Howard. I think the drama is all her own.

Gleek always has calluses, blisters, and healing blisters on the palms of her hands. They come from climbing swingsets and crossing money bars. I spent most of my childhood with similar badges of activity. I always had bruises and scrapes and half-healed scabs, as does Gleek. My hair was always a tangly mess, ditto Gleek. Gleek shares my childhood fascination with horses. I was puzzled when Kiki was not enthralled by my huge stacks of horse books remaining from my childhood reading days. But I’ll bet that Gleek will read them all and love them as I did. Kiki has shown very little interest in braiding, but Gleek braids all the time. I still love to braid, particularly my own long hair. Gleek is fascinated by make up and fashion, as was I at her age. She is eagerly looking forward to getting her ears pierced and wearing eye shadow. I remember being the same way.

Gleek is more headstrong and stubborn than I was as a child. If I ever got into trouble at school it was emotionally crushing for me, but Gleek seems to be able to brush it off.

So I see these things in my girls now and it is like echoes across time. They are similar to me, but they are not me. They will make different choices than I have made and will end up in places that I can not predict. As a mother I hope that those places are ones that make them happy and fulfilled. Their choices may make them more like me or less like me. Both could be good, both could be bad. Mostly I need to see these similarities because they help me to understand the wonderful individuals who are my daughters.