In The Company Of Men

Central West End gallery stroll (to indulge mom)

Now that my sons are all teenagers or near teenage, I am much more aware of living with four men and no other females.

Recently, my husband and the boys got a family cat. As you might have guessed, they brought back a male.


Years ago, pré-parenthood, I remember observing women with children and adolescents. Well-dressed women, frazzled women, all sorts of women. All looking a bit less relaxed than younger women with just school and/or jobs and/or romantic or social relationships.

I particularly remember looking at the women with all boys: a foreshadowing of my destiny, many of these women looked slightly lost in a sea of boy-ness: shorts, masculine clothing, asphyxiating socks, and also...a male verbal universe. Not a whole lot of chatting going on in public between those moms and their men.

Fast forward to my current life. We're in the kitchen and family bonding.
My oldest son who is 16 asks: "So, a question about talking to girls...When they ask if you think they lost weight, what are you supposed to answer?"
"This", my husband says, "is what you answer" as he pantomines escaping the kitchen as if hell and all its furies were chasing him.
My son expands on this theme explaining that indeed, if a guy asked him, the right answer would be something along the line of "Dude, you used to be ENORMOUS...". Because that's how guys show they like each other.

And there you have it: I live in a gender bi-cultural home where I am a minority of one.

My boys and husband are having a blast. They relentlessly show each other love by ruthlessly teasing and insulting each other. My main options are to be the party pooper or one of the guys who dishes it back. A third option, which is not manifested much, would be one of the men empathizing with my plight and "feminizing" things even slightly, without mockery, once in a while. So to recap my choices: kill-joy, frat boy gorilla, object of pity or outcast.

What my friends Keiko and Robyn and I were discussing this morning at breakfast was that there are only constrained solutions to this, like when I make an effort to interject into guy talk: the boys will play along for a while and then eventually turn back to their dad or each other, which feels much more natural to them. Occasionally, I will be one of the guys, something that is not too hard after more than two decades of training or working in academic medicine but then, also eventually, it becomes a bit of a strain and I need to retire in my girl cave.

"Surely there can be some kind of hand signal you could use?" says Robyn, meaning that I could operationalize signaling when I've reached the testosterone overdose danger zone...

Yes, I can think of some hand signals...none too feminine.



There are probably some advantages of this bi-culturalism. Just like bilingualism makes you smarter.

I'll just continue coping by feeling sorry for the men who live with ALL women.
Then again, I can't feel too sorry as research suggests there are advantages to THAT.

Till later,

Anne