There are many things that we feel we should make our kids do that indeed we likely should. Teeth brushing is a good idea, doctor’s appointments come to mind. But many of these shoulds are just knee-jerk reflexes, repetition compulsions. Things we just feel like we’re supposed to be doing, even though we’re not always quite sure why, which means they’re driven by tradition, conformity, social fear, and peer pressure. Not much in that list of motivators to be too proud of really. And even though I’m a teacher by trade, I’ve gotta admit, one of the most sadly over-burdened shoulds is homework.

I don’t really have any friends who are mothers. I know a few fathers, but their kids are way younger than mine, entrenched in phases I can barely remember. Just being parents only buys so much bonding. If I ever were to develop a friendship with a mother though, I’ve always imagined her not to have girls. She would have to be stuck with boys like me. It’s an assumption based on a suspicion: mothering boys and mothering girls are such fundamentally distinct experiences that whatever common ground is shared by simply mothering gets canceled out by that difference. Ok, maybe not canceled out, that’s extreme. But dampened. Very very dampened.

I recently celebrated my 50th birthday. I had my kids that day, but luckily, my brother came to visit too. Else the occasion would surely have felt swallowed by the whims and wiles of my sons, by their age-appropriate, yet still insulting, levels of empathy. For a very long section of our lives it doesn’t actually feel like we’re aging. We’re getting older, but not aging. And then suddenly we are. It’s impossible to isolate how I feel about my aging from its constant dance with the evolution of my sons. They are getting older, but I am aging. We’re a study in contrasts cause I had them late.