How one son's growing interest in sex contributed to my increasingly greying hair.
First published in Monday Magazine
SEX AND THE GREYING MOTHER
by
Bev. M. Cooke
I always thought I was alternative. I supported the lettuce boycott way back when, didn't use Nestles, avoided Nikes and cheered on the protestors in Seattle and Montreal. I read Heinlein and thought line and step marriages were the way of the future, and couldn't wait for the closet to be demolished. I vowed, when the time came, to wear my grey hair proudly. Boy - was I mistaken. It took the discovery of sex by my precocious pre-pubscesent son to teach me just how mainstream and conservative - and vain - I really am.
I remember the first few hairs distinctly. They appeared, as if by magic, when he discovered his favourite toy about three seconds after we removed his diaper to introduce him to potty training. He still hasn't let go. I got a henna wash the next day.
His sixth year was good for at least half of what grey I now carry. One night, just before supper, he looked up from his comic book to ask, quite apropos of nothing, "Do men and women rub their private parts together when they sex?"
The shade of my mother loomed close and I heard her favourite mantra, "I hope you have kids exactly like you." I had asked a similar question - but a twelve, Ma, twelve, not six! - while in the middle of rush-hour, downtown Toronto traffic.
We didn't cause an accident that long ago Friday night, and I didn't quite cut off my finger with the butcher's cleaver this particular Thursday evening, but there were definitely more white hairs in the hairbrush that night. I think what really encouraged the grey was his informing me that his friend (who shall remain nameless to avoid embarrassing the kid's poor parents) had seen his mom and dad doing it.
'They let him watch? But this is Oak Bay!' was my first incredulous thought. I'm still not sure what I was expecting, or why the locale should be significant. Maybe it was the stereotyping we're all guilty of: quiet, staid, conservative (old) Oak Bay, where it's done only at night; the shades drawn, door closed, covers (all of them) up, you and your opposite sexed spouse, clutching the marriage certificate tightly. However, I reined in my prurient imagination, and asked simply, "Did they know?"
My son thought about it. "I don't think so. He was supposed to be in bed."
The conversation continued along its slightly surreal path. When he felt as enlightened as mere words could make him he asked, "Can I watch you and Dad?"
My answer, "No, it's a private thing," was a monument of restraint, considering that what I wanted to do was call the nearest cloistered monastery and offer him as an acolyte immediately.
But it was his last question that really contributed to the snow on my roof.
"What does it smell like?"
Definitely a monastery. And I'd run away to a convent. Preferably ones with vows of silence. And head covering wimples. With long, long, veils. So no one could see the grey. I moved up to L'Oreal Shining Auburn the next morning.
Then there was the first day he wore a jock strap to his baseball practice. He - who's never even seen a Presely or a Stones performance! - walked along the street, pelvis thrust forward, hammering (loudly) on the cup. He insisted on informing everyone he knew (and I swear, the kid knows everyone in the city) about his new apparel, banging it for proof. But what caused that white streak right down the centre of my head was his offering to show it to one poor old woman. I thought she was going to lay an obscenities charge right after she recovered from her apoplexy. I went for the big guns this time - Clariol Sexy Burgandy.
The latest crop came in this weekend. We were preparing to go to the beach for an afternoon's swimming and picnic supper.
"Girls are lucky," the boy announced suddenly, in the midst of slathering on his sunscreen lotion. He glanced from his sister's modest two piece to his skimpy Speedo. "They don't have as much skin showing to put sunscreen on."
"Just wait," I said, "till she starts wearing a bikini."
"I'm not going to wear a bikini," my daughter replied. "I don't want gross male oinks staring at me."
"Cissy," said my eight year old boy, "they'll stare anyway. Trust me, I'm a boy, and I know."
Maybe I'll just move, alone, to Tuktoyuktuk, where it's so cold I have to wear a hat all time, even indoors, and then no one will see the grey, and I won't have to listen to pre-pubescent boys discover sex - even theoretically. And tomorrow I'm going to the hairdresser and get it all dyed purple.
