When my boys were little, (when they still wanted to do everything I did) I would paint their nails with clear polish when I painted mine. This eventually progressed to clear with sparkles. Nick quickly outgrew this but Devon didn’t. This made their dad very angry. He was a mans man and he thought I was turning “his boys” into sissies! He was sure I was going to make them gay (funny I ever divorced the charming, intelligent gent). I assured him that I would not damage their manhood in anyway and that it was fairly normal behavior. Devon eventually moved on too…to Barbie dolls and The Easy Bake Oven! (that just convinced his father that I had ruined him).
He is now all boy. This leads me to Friday night.
After dropping Nick off at a friend’s house, Devon and I stopped to get something to eat. We wandered into a drug store and bought a few things, including some foot cream. We decided we would go home and soak our feet in my footbath. We did some soaking, some scrubbing, and some clipping. I rubbed Devon’s feet with the foot cream and he said it felt “better than eating 10 candy bars” (that is the ultimate heaven to him). I decided to paint my toenails and Devon sat with me, watching Smallville. He finally asked me if I still had “that sparkly” polish?
OMG, Oooooohhh Noooo, I thought to myself, 11 is a little too old for painted nails. I told him that I did. He asked if he could look at it and I took it out of my bag and handed it to him. He rolled it around in his hands and then said, “Could we paint my nails?” OH LORDY! I didn’t want him to feel bad about wanting his nails painted so I said, “sure”.
He promptly reached into the bag and pulled out my brightest shade of red and said, “how about this one?” I tried to convince him that red is really hard to remove, no such luck! He was rolling the bottle in his hands and he asked me “do any boys who aren’t gay paint their nails?” I told him that I know men who get manicures (I just failed to mention that they don’t paint their nails red). I did manage to talk him into only painting his big toes. They looked lovely and we lay on the couch together and admired our toes. Will he outgrow this? Do I really care? Nope!
It was a nice Friday night.
His dad would kill me, I mean really kill me, not just kinda but completely kill me!
2 comments:
I adore you for writing this.
This is what motherhood is all about, and sadly, not enough moms (not to mention dads) are up to the task.
Kids that age have a lot of gender confusion, so wanting to paint his nails in no way means he's gay. What it does mean is that he's comfortable enough with you to ask hard questions. If more kids could be so open with their parents, adolescence would be so much easier! You handled it like a pro - I just love you for this post.
Thanks for the nice comments! He is such a sweet thing, I want to keep him that way.
F.Y.I.-"Lemmy" has been saved and is currently living on the dinning room table.
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