A Letter to Aidan - Girls!

 

“Mommy, Pete has a girlfriend”.

It was October 2012, the end of your Grade 1 year – and just when I thought we had climbed all the mountains, survived all the snares, escaped all the deadly traps and were out of the woods until January next year. You sprang it on me in the same tone of voice you used when asking for more strawberries, like it was the most basic thing to tell your mother on a Tuesday afternoon – the topic of Girls. You were seven and I had a mild heart attack. There it was. The name of the enemy uttered in my kitchen: Girls.

Not now, not yet, were my first thoughts. Can’t we just finish school first? Please give me another 11 years.

I took a deep breath.

“Oh, and how do you know Pete has a girl friend?”  The deep breath was still stuck somewhere between my heart cavity and my gut.

“Because they hold hands during break. And he even tried to kiss her!” You gave that typical Aidan giggle that I would recognise among a million other voices.

“And you know what Mommy – she is not even in Grade 1 with us. She is in Grade 2!”

Good grief. At that point I was in dire need of some psychological input. How did we go from making cheese sandwiches to the one conversation I was the least prepared for? My little boy was growing up and I realised if I got lost behind at that point, I would never catch up. It was sink or swim. I dove right in.

“Do you have a girlfriend Aidan?”

“No!”

“How about kissing a girl?” I forced a smile, but without looking in the mirror I could tell it looked as fake as it felt.

“No! Eeuw! I don’t want a girlfriend and I don’t want to kiss a girl. That’s gross.”

That dumped me into a total state of confusion. Was that the right or the wrong reaction? What were 7-year old boys supposed to say at this important crossroads of their lives? Should I encourage you to try and kiss a girl or should I applaud your decision and tell you to rather focus on your maths skills until you were 18 years old? Why was it getting so hot in my kitchen?

I sat down and told you it’s okay to want to kiss girls and hold their hands, but it’s also okay to want to just play with them. You had to do what you wanted. Yes, you were going to want to try the kissing thing sometime, and no it was not gross.  Whenever you got to that point, you could talk to Dad and I about it. You smiled and continued with your homework. That was clearly the end of that conversation.

I was still staring at you – totally wrapped in our first ever girl talk – when I smelt burnt cheese.  My own thoughts weren’t the only thing boiling over.

Later that night, Dad and I couldn’t help but laugh about it – our “green” son. The little boy with the ignorant face, who was still wearing dinosaur T-shirts, didn’t like gel in his hair and would much rather play with the girls on the jungle gym. While your friends were starting to chase the little girls around the playground, holding hands and trying to steal kisses.

We knew it was almost time and that that afternoon’s talk was the first little step off the precipice. You were starting to learn to fly on your own – much too soon for our liking, but at the same time totally out of our control.

I found myself wondering what your first girl friend would look like – would she be blond, brunette or a red head with freckles? I would obviously detest her, but would she like me? And most importantly, how long still before that first kiss during first break?

We never heard about the love life of Pete and his Grade 2 cougher again!