“Mama, why was I born a boy?”
Startled, I put my book down and wrap an arm around his skinny shoulders. “Are you not happy being a boy?” I ask.
“No. I like to be a boy.”
“Do you want to be a girl instead?”
“No.” He pauses. “But Mila & Margot did not have imagination of a boy witch.”
Ah. There it is.
A few weeks ago, while the girls were playing a game of pretend we are witches he had wanted to join in. And they had laughed. “There’s no boy witches!” They offered to let him be an elf or a pet scorpion or something more boyish. But no. He wanted to be a witch too.
I don’t often intervene in their imaginary play. They don’t need grownups intruding on the worlds they weave from dress-ups and magnatiles and stick horses and air. But this time I stepped in.
“If you can imagine that you are witches, why can’t imagine that he is a witch too?”
“But!” they protested. “But witches are girls! And he’s a boy!”
“You have great imaginations. Why would you limit them like this? Why can’t you stretch yourselves and imagine a boy witch? Is that so much harder than imagining that he is a scorpion?”
They sulked. But I could tell they saw my point. He was allowed to play.
He didn’t, however, forget.
“Baby, I remember. You wanted to be a boy witch. And the girls didn’t understand. But then you got to pretend to be a boy witch. And it was very fun.”
“Yeah.” Then, in typical four-year-old fashion, he switches gears. “Can I play Mouse ABCs?”
I curse, not for the first time, the day I let him see that app. It would be really fun and probably educational, but I wasn’t willing to pay for the subscription. He persisted in asking, though.
“No, you can’t play Mouse ABCs. I haven’t paid for it so nobody can play it.”
“Well, I have some moneys.” He runs off to grab a small stack of pennies the girls had given him the day before. “I have onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleven money. We can give them to the mouse and I can play ABCs.”
Oh my heart.
“Maybe,” he continues with a grin, “the mouse will sniff them. Because he will think they are cheese.
This boy. I want to bottle him up and keep him forever.
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