I picked him after his first full school day (normally, he goes from 8:30-11:30 and that day was 8:30-4), not knowing what to expect. He still naps at home and on the days he misses one, the last couple of hours before bedtime can be especially painful. He was surprisingly upbeat, wearing his new shark swim trunks, hair wet from the sprinklers.
We headed to KMart. We found the toy aisle and he started doing the potty dance almost immediately. Crossing his legs, bending his knees and holding his crotch while checking out a plastic golf kit.
"Do you need to use the potty, Henry?"
"Nope." More dancing.
"They have potties here. It's not good to make your bladder wait."
"Nope."
...
"Mom, I have to use the potty. I can't hold it."
I tell him to try and grab his hand, hustling towards my guess of where those potties might be.
"I'm going to pee right now!"
I scoop him up in my arms, running at this point. "Hold on, baby, we're almost there," I reassure, dodging bins of As Seen on TV products, Bed-In-A-Bag sets and $5 DVDs. We pass the restroom sign and circle back. Henry is clenching my body with his legs wrapped around me.
"Here we go," I gasp, pushing through the door and cramming into the first stall. He grabs his pants and sits on the toilet and I hear the tinkling before his cheeks even hit the sit.
"Phew," he says. "That was a close one. When you ran, you pushed my pee back in."
I use the potty after him and he opens the stall door while my skirt is up around my waist. This is already going so well.
At the bikes, Henry immediately sees the Doc McStuffins bike and declares, "That's a girl bike."
I take a deep breath, still recovering from my sprint and now poised to go into battle against misogyny for my son's soul.
"Why do you say that?" I ask.
"Because it is."
"Do you like Doc McStuffins?"
He thinks for a second. "I do."
"Well, that bike is for anyone who likes Doc McStuffins."
He thinks again. His logic only goes so far and I've presented a solid case.
"I don't want that bike," he settles on.
"You don't have to pick that bike," I agree, "But I want you to know you could if you wanted to."
He is already off looking at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which I know he's never watched) and Spiderman (which he's semi-obsessed with, but knows so little about). I curse the boys he goes to school with. I curse the media. I curse the marketing departments of every major corporation. What happened to orange bikes? Or bikes with dinosaurs? Why do we have to buy crappy character bikes that limit my son? The answer is, we don't. But we were there, days away from Bike Friday.
I pointed to a red and black bike with flames. "What do you think of this one?" I try to keep my voice casual.
"S'okay. I like Spiderman."
Deep breath.
"But this one is on fire," he continues.
"Yeah, that's pretty neat." I add, hopefully.
Don't get me wrong. I like Spiderman. I love XMen. What I don't love is my three-year-old liking something solely based on what his friends and media has told him is cool. If he liked that a regular kid - a nerdy kid, a kid interested in science and photography and writing - got bit by a spider, got super powers and used those powers to fight crime, then we could talk. But instead he denied a smart girl who has the power to talk to toys and uses that power to cure them, a story that he knows and love, because she was on a pink bike. What his friends and our culture tells him speaks louder in his ears than even his bladder telling him he has to pee.This is where I have a problem.
We bought the flame bike, one that he will pass on to his brother in a couple years. And at home, while he waited for Bumpie to assemble the bike, he found a large, pink, paper flower in the back of my car. A flower we'd brought home from walking in the Pride Parade. After the brakes were tightened, the training wheels attached and the horn tested, Henry looped the giant, bright pink poof of petals to the handlebars. "This is my parade flower," he told me, and pushed off on his bike.
I spent the rest of my week at a Hardy Girls' conference for adults working with girls. We talked about media literacy, being a muse, and social activism. With each power point slide, video, discussion or activity, I thought of my boys at home and what they are up against. I pictured that pink flower on Henry's bike and how to hold onto the three-year-old who enjoys flowers and parades over misogynistic conventions. How to teach my sons to listen to themselves and decide on their own. Not to look down on a color because it's associated with girls. To look at their mother, who they still love and adore (most of the time) and show them a contradiction to what a lot of culture wants them to believe. Teach them to ask questions and argue with those contradictions. To expose them, over and over and over, to complex people who can like reading and football and purple and green and boys and girls and traveling and camping and watching bad television.
Knowing they are sponges, I want them to pick up everything, notice and observe, and come to their own conclusions.
