The Unforeseen Pleasures of Watching Boys in Motion

When I was young, I never thought that I'd be the mother of three boys. If I did imagine motherhood, I thought of it as something that would happen in the distant future, maybe in my 30s, and that I would, of course, raise a strong, intelligent, self-confident young woman.

But chance or fate had other plans for me, and I found myself with first one, and then two little boys under the age of three. Finally, some five years later, I took one more shot at conceiving a daughter.

It was not to be. Soon after I realized I was pregnant, I found myself looking at an ultrasound that made the technician laugh out loud. There was my Nico floating around, legs spread in such a way that the outline of a tiny penis was visible on the screen. “You're definitely having a boy,” he said smiling, and for a split second, I felt a wave of dismay sweep over me as my dreams of a little girl dissolved into what might have been.

Yet the realities that have replaced those dreams have given me so many experiences I would never have envisioned when I was simply thinking of a future daughter. I've had the chance to play with Legos and Matchbox cars, to run under a swing as I launched the boys skyward yelling, “Underdog!” and to watch two of them (Alejandro and Tomás) grow tall enough to rest their chins on my head and look so pleased that they had outstripped me in height.

But one of the most striking things I've learned is an appreciation for the sheer grace and power of the male body in motion.

As a young mother, I soon realized that boys seem to have some innate compulsion to push themselves physically and to express themselves in physical ways. Beanie babies turned into artillery; pillows were always flying across the family room, and the cushions spent more time as part of an obstacle course than they did on the sofa.

I was neither athletic nor particularly graceful as a child, so it always took me by surprise when I witnessed my boys doing back dives into the pool,walking across the top bar of a play structure, trying out parkour stunts, or performing an especially intimidating kata, all the while explaining in gruesome detail just how it could incapacitate an opponent.

Part of my general klutziness certainly stems from a deep-seated fear. My mother was always warning me about getting hurt. “Remember your cousin's boyfriend went down a pool slide the wrong way and broke his neck,” was just one of the cautionary tales she used to share with me.

I remember trying to run off a cliff that is about 20 feet above Lake Villarrica in Chile, where my husband's family has a farm. Since there is a ledge that juts out just below, you can't stand at the edge and jump; you need a running start. But I've never been able to work up the courage to launch myself into what looks like a sheer drop from the top. My cautionary instincts are just too strong.

As a result, my kids think my childhood was fairly boring, especially when they hear about their dad making a homemade rocket by scraping the sulfur off the end of matches or running through an abandoned Colt factory in New Haven carrying bottles for recycling and trying to get away from the security guards.

I have nothing on these exploits. On the other hand, I've never been the kind of mother who tells her kids, “Don't do that because you might get hurt!” As long as they used safety belts in the car and wore helmets when they were riding, rollerblading, or skateboarding, I've never worried about them.

And I spent a lot of time not watching what they were doing and hoping none of them would earn a Darwin Award after uttering those fatal words, “Hey guys, watch this!”

Yet I have to admit I get a vicarious thrill when I catch one of them at the top of a 30-foot tree or see the footage on the video camera that one of them took when he lay at the base of a skateboard ramp so he could catch his brother flying overhead.

We had just moved back to our house in California for a few months in 2008, when I came back from a Costco trip and noticed that the neighbors were giving me funny looks, the kind accompanied by head shaking, and a clear insinuation that I had failed all their expectations of good parenting.

“All right,” I told the boys as I entered the house. “What were you up to?”

“Nuuuuuthing,” they both answered with silly grins on their faces.

After a little prodding, they confessed that they had been jumping off the roof into a pile of leaves they had raked up in the front yard, and of course, had commemorated the occasion with photos.

Now that the two oldest are almost out of their teens, I don't see quite so many scrapes and bruises. But Tomás, who is 18, still exhibits the same kind of infectious excitement I saw when he was five and used to tell me, “Mami, watch can I do!” And Nico, who is 12, adores his older brother in part because he takes him to the skate park and commiserates with him when he gets in trouble at school for climbing on things.

Yesterday, when I came home, Tomás called to me from his bedroom to take a look at some photos he and his friend had taken while they were skateboarding at a nearby bowl. Tomás has a passion for all kinds of skateboarding, street skating, bowl skating, and vertical runs, including the long board, which he would like to see in professional competitions.

When I asked him what he loves about skateboarding, he told me that “it's a freeing experience.... In a bike or car, you're strapped in, but with skateboard, you're standing on a piece of wood strapped to wheels” and then he added, “I skateboard now for the same reason I did when I was six. Because it's fun.”

Watching my boys in motion, I realize that it's not just their agility and grace that I admire. It's that they are so clearly having the time of their lives, and that's something I hope they never grow out of.

My Children are from Mars, Mercury, and a Galaxy Far Far Away

When you head home from the hospital with a little bundle in an infant car seat, you worry about sleepless nights, developmental milestones, and how you're ever going to pay for childcare, much less college.

What you don't really think about is that somewhere in that tiny little body is a unique and often unfathomable individual who will very soon develop a will of its own.

While I never had very distinct ideas of what I wanted my children to become and considered myself too “progressive” to slot them into the conventional triad of doctor/lawyer/business professional, I did have half-formed dreams of them winning awards, playing in an orchestra, or at least making the honor roll.

And then they started growing up, and my expectations met the irresistible twin forces of personality and peer pressure.

My oldest (the one from Mars) was very independent and cared little for convention. In preschool, he decided that it was cool to wear knee socks pulled up all the way over his knees, and soon his best friend's mom was calling me to ask me, “Where did you get those socks? My son won't go to school without them!”

In elementary school, he came up with his own Halloween costumes based on characters from book like Roald Dahl's The BFG. The year he dressed up as Pippi Longstocking, complete with bright red wig and pig tails, I remember one parent looking at me and saying, “That's Mars? I thought he was a girl,” and then turning bright red in case I took offense.

In middle school, he insisted on taking up martial arts and giving up dance, despite having the chance to fulfill his mother's dream of seeing him on stage in a leading role in The Nutcracker.

By high school, I knew very well that I could offer Mars advice, and he would smile and then do what he wanted anyway.

My youngest son (Mercury) was born almost ten years after his older brother and spent the first five years of his life as the object of adoring attention. We were so happy when we uttered his first word, “bubble” in a tiny breathy voice that we didn't realize he would never stop talking.

Mercury is always in motion and in close orbit around his older brothers. As a person who is uncomfortable around weapons of any kind and squeamish about depictions of violence,it was quite disconcerting to have a child who begged for an air soft gun from the age of eight and got his brother to convince me that it was “okay” for him to play Modern Warfare.

If there is a child who fit classic definition of ADD/HD, it is Mercury, and that can make life as a mother a little exhausting. I've been known to tell him after repeated badgering to make sure I'm listening, “No, I'm not listening. You've been talking nonstop, and I need a little break. Please!”

Peer pressure plays a considerable role in Mercury's view of the world, and that means I have become even more of an “embarrassment” to him than I ever was to any of the others.

Yet Mercury has also fulfilled one of my cherished maternal dreams. He plays the violin very well and will soon be much better than I ever was.

And then there is my second son, who seems to exist somewhere in a galaxy far, far way. He has been my most challenging and enigmatic child. Galaxy is the kind of quiet, unassuming young man that adults love and small children flock to.

He has a natural athletic grace and could play any sport on a competitive level, except that he only likes to compete against himself. On a long board or a surf board, he is a wonder to behold, and when he's not doing that, he's likely in his room, playing the guitar and composing music.

If you ask my children what they want to become when they grow up, Mars is practically there. In May he'll graduate from college with a degree in Political Communication, fluent Arabic, and a plan to go to law school. Mercury, on the other hand, is still torn between wanting to blow things up and his desire to become a race car driver.

And Galaxy is still somewhere far, far away contemplating his options.

Twenty-one years ago I would never have imagined being the mother of three such different individuals, and I know that's a good thing. Because if I've learned anything, it's that parenting is as much a process of letting go of expectations as it is of watching over and directing a child's path.

These three boys will find their own orbit, and I won't be the center of their universe any longer. But there will always be a gravitational pull between us, the familial tie of parent and child, and I trust that this force will keep us within the same ambit.