The Power of the Written Word or A Commentary on How Mothers Think Everything is Their Fault.

So as most of our good friends know our daughter wants desparately to be a boy.  At age 6 she still wonders when her penis is going to 'show up'.  Not long ago after watching the XGames this year, she mentioned wanting to use her winnings from being a skate board champion to get her 'boobs cut off'.  There is a female chef on Top Chef this new season that '...has hair like a boy.' And sometimes late at night when she isn't sleeping (like her dad) she'll cuddle up to me all soft and yummy and she'll say, 'Mom, let's have a conversation."  I'll bite, like I always do--"What about Monkey Bit?".  She'll say, "About being a boy.". 

"Why do you want to be a boy"

"Because they are better/cooler/funner".

At this point, depending on where my own head is at.  I'll reply with "No they are not!" or "Ha!  Good one" or "Knock yourself out and have fun with it.  Let me know how that goes for ya."  I know that my answers at this point don't really matter, and I know that with an older brother that she adores, plays with constantly and so very well, that this is normal.  The grass is always greener....all girls do through this (according to most mothers.)  Don't worry.  She just wants to know that we're cool with whatever she wants to be, I guess.  She could also just be really good at pushing my buttons.  Or both.  Okay, it's both.

Anyway, there is a good chance at some age in the future we'll wake up and she'll be trying to go to school or the mall or wherever with short shorts, make-up, heels or some combination that will turn her dad's face green regardless of who she is interested in.  Boys may well turn out to be something she wants instead of wants to be.  Or not.  We'll be fine with whatever and that's not really the point of this.   The point is, and this is where things get really pathetic, is that on some level I believe that because I read "Middlesex" when I was pregnant with her, I brought all this on.

Yes.  Because of just one of the many books I read when I was pregant, I've managed to pre-determine my childs life. As mothers we grant ourselves many powers and blame ourselves for many things, but this takes the cake. 

And why this book?  Why not one of the Romance novels?  Or one of the many Brother Cadfael books by Ellis Peters?  Or even "Sense & Sensibility"?  I read all of those while preggers with her.

Or is it because it was the one that stuck?  Is the fact that I remember this book...the words, the scenes, the tempo of it so vividly to this very day, the reason that I believe I've transformed by daughters life by the mere ingesting of a story?    Was it that powerful?  Or am I?

Sigh.  I know it's neither the book or me.  It's her.  She has free will and her own lovely brain with it's own lovely, odd, brilliant and frightening thoughts.  And it is so clear that while we will teach her many things and expose her to many more, in the end it is who she is and what she does with it all that will ultimately make her the person she becomes.

Which means that I am not all powerfull as a mother and nor will it be all my fault.  And right now, neither of those two realities sit that well with me.