Coming of Age

Miguel played tackle football with a girl this past Saturday, and I was the chaperone.

He and Lyla, who is also 11 and lives a couple of blocks away, scootered past me as I drove in the neighborhood after officiating at a wedding. They took turns passing each other and then jumped off the curb, executing some scooter maneuver whose name I can never remember.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine,” they both said, which is slightly better than “Nothing” or “I don’t know.”

“Hey dad,” said Miguel, “Can you play football with us?”

It was 95 degrees outside and not quite 4 pm. I was almost indignant at his request.

“No,” I nearly screamed. “It’s boiling out here. I am not playing football right now.”

“We just need you to be the quarterback,” Miguel implored.

After ten minutes of pre-teenager persistence, I agreed to toss the ball to each of them.

“I don’t know what it is,” said Lyla, who has two younger sisters. Her parents are very sweet as well. All of them moved into the complex about a month ago. “But we always compete against each other.

A week or two ago, she and Miguel joined a few other neighborhood kids and Lyla's father, James, who coaches Lyla’s soccer team, for a spirited game of soccer in the park outside our home. At one point, Miguel sprinted alongside Lyla, trying to prevent her from breaking away for a goal. She zoomed ahead of him and he elbowed her, causing her to tumble to the ground.

Later I said to him, “So the only way to beat Lyla is soccer is to knock her to the ground.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said.

Yeah, right.

Since then, Miguel and Lyla have engaged in friendly but moderately intense competitions against each other: Soccer, skateboards, scooters, basketball, even baseball. They’d basically split the various contests and saw football as another opportunity to school the other person.

Once we got to the field, Miguel said, “We’re playing tackle.”

Tackle? What exactly was going on right in front of me? I played co-ed tackle football in high school during a Jewish youth group outing at Penwood State Park in Bloomfield. I thought the object that day was to play tackle football. Being the naïve nerd that I was, I didn’t realize that several of my male friends saw tackle football with girls as a quick and relatively hassle-free way to cop a feel of a member of the opposite sex.

Given that Miguel is younger than I was then and certainly more naïve and innocent, I wasn’t worried that he was anticipating a grope-fest with Lyla. On the contrary, he has yet to express any interest in females as sweet and lovely beings who get our hormonal motors racing. In fact, he becomes incensed if I even tease him about girls or girlfriends.

A few years ago, one of his classmates at the Greenwood School in Mill Valley was Monet Weir, daughter of Bob, a member of the Dead. “Miguel, I’d love to be in-laws with Monet’s parents.”

Miguel cringed and he appeared ready to belch fire at me.

Last year, I attempted some psychological matchmaking when I said, “So is Sela your girlfriend?” Sela is a very outgoing and fun-loving kid who I saw as a perfect complement to Miguel’s more reserved but active nature. Plus her dad teaches PE, so he'd be a great in-law to welcome into the family. He’s a Games and Fitness God.

Miguel’s response, though, was to basically threaten me with bodily harm when I joked about Sela. Two weeks ago I finally declared that I would no longer tease him about girls. As Miguel approaches adolescence, I know I risk alienating him at a crucial time in our lives if I persist in joshing him about girls or anything else. So I stopped.

But when Miguel said they were playing tackle, I did pause for a moment to ponder any deeper pubescent meanings behind his statement. But all he added was, “I’m going to school her.”

“I hope you’re not taunting,” I responded.

Lyla got the ball first and she and I lined up about ten yards from the sidewalk, which was the end zone. The rules were simple: four chances to score a touchdown. Lyla crouched slightly behind me. I handed her the ball and she ran right into Miguel, who wrestled her to the ground. On the next play, I lobbed the ball toward her and she scampered a yard or two before Miguel tackled her. She finally broke free on the next down and scored.

When it was my turn to quarterback for Miguel, he wanted to run as well. But given that Lyla had never played football before, I thought that was unfair. So I passed it to him. Lyla grabbed his jersey and eventually managed to drag Miguel to the turf.

“Lyla, grab him around his waist,” I called to her. “It’s easier to bring him down.”

She and Miguel traded touchdowns twice, so the score was tied, 2-2. It was broiling hot and Lyla was ready to quit. Miguel had the ball, so I said, “Next touchdown wins.” Then I proceeded to make a few poor passes on purpose because I didn’t want him to win. I didn’t want to him to lose, either, but I thought a tie was a successful outcome. And neither of them complained when the game ended after the ball soared past Miguel onto the grass beyond the sidewalk. They raced over to Lyla’s house to cool off into the wading pool.

A couple of hours later, as dusk settled on the neighborhood, a gaggle of girls came upon me and said, “Where’s Miguel? We want to meet Miguel.”

For reasons that defy human logic, Lyla’s father invited all 21 members of her soccer team for a bonding sleepover and 12 accepted. About eight of them stood before me, a pulsating mass of giggles and energy and female determination, and asked me to help them find Miguel.

“I’m sure he’ll show up,” I said.

And he did, completely oblivious that he was the object of their desire in ways that probably made little sense to any of them.

Miguel is growing up right before us. On one hand, he voluntarily sat on my lap yesterday when we studied Hebrew together after school, a gesture of innocence and immaturity that I treasured. But he has also taken on more responsibility in and out of the home as he earns our trust. And now he may have a crush (which might be reciprocal) on Lyla. I am just happy that they are friends and can share a love of sports and playing outside.

My chaperone duties will resume later in the school year at the 6th grade dance in the spring. I have been assured the event involves no tackling or tossing of any pigskin objects. Touchdown!

Girls Really Just Want to Have Fun

And so does everyone else. It’s just that we’re still not sure what it means to be a male or a female. Last week at the track and field world championships in Berlin, the international track body (the IAAF) asked the winner of the women’s 800-meter race to undergo gender testing in the wake of suspicions about her rapid improvement, muscular build and deep voice.

Caster Semenya’s team manager said she “believes her talent is God-given and will continue to exercise it.” Semenya’s father said, “She is my little girl. I raised her and I have never doubted her gender. She is a woman and I can repeat that a million times.”

Semenya’s case has taken on ugly overtones amid what should be a glorious moment for the young woman, her family, and South African athletics. Our own recent gender issues are completely mild compared to the media firestorm and circus surrounding Semenya.

Early last week, Miguel announced that he was planning to be a girl for Halloween. “I want to get nail polish and lipstick,” he said. Then he added he wanted to buy a wig and a dress, or at least use one of Verna’s.

My initial reaction? “He’s gay.” I know that’s not an enlightened or even fair perspective, but that was my first thought. Believe me, whatever sexual life Miguel drifts toward or adopts as he grows into manhood will be fine with Verna and me. And whatever latent issues of prejudice and discomfort I have about his sexuality will surely dissipate into a swirl of parental love. I just want him to be happy, healthy, and safe. Blah, blah, blah.

In some ways, Miguel’s costume choice for this year is a relief given that Maya still reacts with abject terror when she sees a mask of any kind. And, frankly, I would much rather see Miguel clad in a skirt than wearing a slasher-goblin-zombie mask with fake blood dripping from his face and gashes across his neck.

Maybe it is my fault anyway. Verna and I have always been fairly open with Miguel about physiology and all that. He’s known from an early age that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, knowledge which made me highly fearful that he would explain his understanding of human anatomy in public.

And one time he kind of did. We were behind a young girl of eight or nine in line at Best Buy in early 2006. Her t-shirt said, “Girls Can Do Anything.”

Miguel looked at her and said, “Girls can’t do anything. They can’t take out their wieners and look at them.”

While I was tempted to scold him for sharing his views out loud in a store on a Saturday mrning, I was impressed by his logic, which was true.

Since Maya is young and we still bath her and she also sees us using the bathroom and the shower, we’ve schooled her about the body as well. She routinely reminds me I can’t touch her vagina, which is great because Verna and I have told her about how certain parts of her body are private, just for her. Of course, I’ve had to tell her that Mommy and Daddy can touch her when we are giving her a bath. But it is easy to see how messy gender and body issues can become.

Yesterday, Maya said she was a boy.

“No, Maya, you’re a girl,” I said.

“No, daddy, I’m a boy.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I am a boy.”

I guess I need to be careful what I’ve wished for. After years of bonding with Miguel, first as an at-home father and then as a play partner, I do have a certified sports buddy. He and I wrestle, play catch, one-on-one basketball and golf, watch sports, and manage a fantasy baseball team together.

I fancy Maya becoming a tomboy like her mother used to be. I cringe whenever someone gives her a frilly outfit or when we dress her in something delicate for holidays and department store photo sittings. So I have made an effort to be rough and tumble with her: I toss baseballs at her as she swings her Giants bat. I chase her around the playground.

But I am fully aware that she will be whatever she will be. She may display the athletic acumen of Misty May-Trainer, Babe Didrickson, or Serena Williams and look like an international runway model and dress like a Beverly Hills denizen. Or none of the above.

So Miguel wants to be a girl for Halloween and Maya says she is a boy. And I am happy that they are adjusting to life and society and culture as individuals, self-actualizing themselves through the ever-present gender minefield of the 21st century.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Maya has a love-hate relationship with water, which is one reason why we warn her before her bath. Last week I said, “Maya, tonight you’re having a bath. But I’m not washing your hair, just your body.”

“Not my hair,” she said. “But you have to wash my booty.”

Wash my booty? Where’d she learn that one? Oh, thank you, big brother Miguel. In fact, Maya happily shakes her booty in public, at home, just about any place. Put on music with a good American Bandstand beat, and Maya is swaying her hips and wobbling her backside.

And her Elvis wannabe routine scares me. Not because I fear she’ll morph into a tiresome Vegas lounge singer who gorges herself on massive amounts of food and drugs. No, it’s because she’ll be a teenager in less than 10 years, and the boys will be swarming.

At the park last week, Maya was giggling and playing with two girls, one who is four, the other almost two. At one point the three of them laid down on the ground, hands clasped, and posed for a picture my neighbor wanted to take with her cell phone.

I leaned over to my neighbor’s husband (his daughter is the one who is almost two) and said, “I know you are renting, but if you can manage to stay here for another ten years or so, we can form a united front and keep the girls indoors until they’re 30.”

He laughed. His wife (the photographer), who is from Romania, said, “Be careful what you wish for. There was this girl from my town and her father kept her locked up. You know what happened to her?”

I was about to say, “She unleashed herself in a torrent of pent-up sexuality and screwed every boy in Eastern Europe?”

“She became a lesbian,” my neighbor said.

I was speechless and startled before I mustered a response. “Do you think what her father did caused her to become a lesbian?” I asked. “Don’t you think she was predisposed to that beforehand?”

“No, no,” my neighbor said. “What her father did caused it.”

I wasn’t about to enter into a nature vs. nurture debate with my very sweet and young neighbor, but I couldn’t help wondering Margaret Mead-like about the essential core of our discussion. Are people born with certain behaviors or lifestyles or do we choose them later on the basis of our life experiences?

I am inclined for the narrow purposes of this debate to opine that sexual lifestyle is a calling, a biological imperative that we pursue with determination. It is obviously controlled and influenced by environment. But it is way too dismissive and insulting in many ways to assert that homosexuality is the almost deviant offspring of a parent’s (or anyone’s) paranoid behavior.

And none of the debate about sexuality was comforting to me. Because Maya is precocious now I fear that will lead directly to recklessness later. So let’s play along and agree my neighbor is right. And I know that would be a colossal stretch of any imagination. But if she is correct does that mean I will be better served by sequestering Maya until she is 50?

Do I hear 60? When I’ll be 107! Oy!!