Boys

This was a crying weekend for me. Lots of things made me cry-- the weather, watching kids play, music in the car, and nothing at all. But of all the things turning on the waterworks, one was truly surprising. A movie. An old movie from the Old Country. A movie I loved as a kid. A movie that turns out to be thoroughly enjoyable even now. A kind of movie that must exist everywhere they make movies-- a sweet story of tweens figuring out what's important in life and overcoming obstacles together. This one is only a little cheesy, but it's also funny and has an excellent soundtrack, and a very good cast, so I don't mind that Monkey seems to watch it on a continuous loop. By which I mean she watches it in pieces whenever we let her watch a video, and when she gets to the end, she wants to start at the beginning.

Saturday morning I was on the couch (the score was thyroidits:1, Julia:0), and Monkey was watching the movie. It was almost at the end, the scene where a few adults get to watch, with newly found admiration, as the kids come up with the way to overcome the Major Obsticle^TM. One of the adults, eyes misty and voice cracking declares "Boys!"

Now, it's true that the kid who came up with this idea is in fact of the male persuasion. However, girls figure prominently in the story and contribute heftily to the story line, and I am sure in another time and another life, I could've found myself annoyed that the misty-eyed proclamation wasn't more gender-neutral. But not now, not in this life. In this life I started crying and couldn't quite get why. Of course the scene is meant to be filled with pathos, but surely I couldn't actually be buying into it, could I?

And then it hit me. A, although he was most certainly a boy, will never be included in a cohort that is spoken of like that, in a tone that says "now I know the future is in good hands." Oh, the future is still fine, and the boys (and girls) he would've grown up around are wonderful. And I am sure one day one of us will talk about them that way, a little tipsy and more than a little grandiose. But A is now and forever a member of a different cohort. We get misty-eyed talking about them too, but there is no admiration in our voices. There is only love, pain, sadness, and more love. It hurts that there are things I will never get to feel for my boy.