On the eve of "knowing..."

...I'm not sure I want to. Tomorrow, through the marvels of modern medicine, we will come to learn a small bit of information. About noon tomorrow, another life will come into a clearer focus as we learn if that peanut in my wife's belly is to be a boy or girl. While my boys at home think this only matters as to whether she will sit or he will stand to pee, the +/- of it all is everything at once.

Having never had a daughter, I find it daunting.



Just considering the sex of the child is so very vast, so epic to me. I am so very glad that genetic engineering is still in its infancy, for I would not ever feel confident-enough to determine someone's destiny by what to predetermine they pack in their pants.

I think even if I were an old hand at fatherhood, if I'd birthed a brood of boys AND girls, myself--I don't think that even then I'd have the nerve to pin the tail on the donkey. To hang a penis on one or carve a niche for another--that's the stuff of God.

About as close as I dare imagine is to have a role in naming new beings that are my responsibility. My wife and I spend hours, days, years planning something so seemingly simple as a name. Sometimes I don't care, so far as even to let our firstborn name our third-born...knowing all the while that the kid can always have a name change down the road. Besides, they're likely to get stuck with some nickname, Skippy or Sparky or something, so perhaps the Power of Names is highly over-rated.

I was noodling around about this very issue early this morning, worrying that if we were to have a daughter, just how very challenging it is to come up with her first and middle names, irregardless of how well they may sound with our last name, since she would be likely to take the name of her husband in just a couple decades. So in naming her, one must think up something that goes well with everything, yet is not inconsistent with the naming conventions already established in our clan. Oh, the agony! So very tricky to even entertain! (So, on this note, I hope the newbie will be a boy, again.)

Once we do Know, it seems a whole chain reaction takes place, from wardrobe to sleeping arrangements. Even now, well, tomorrow, I will begin to assemble a world for him/her that is in his/her best interests. I will align the planets, set the galaxies in orbit around that child...and oddly, to me, so very, very much of what is to be established is indeed related to what's between the legs.

That's a crass way of saying it, but really--men and women are as different as species, at times. This news tomorrow will be the catalyst of a lifetime of sexism and typecasting, like it or not. The pink or the blue? The dolly or the gun? Though we have always encouraged our boys to be themselves (yeah, they have dolls and nurture them, so eat THAT)....I must admit, even now, that no matter how fairly I intend to operate things, there will be assumptions, accommodations, etc. that will be less-than-equitable, should peanut be a princess. I guess all I can do is try my best.

...but maybe all this angst is just for nothing. There is no knowing until the sonogram, and unfortunately, I'll be in class issuing a final when my newest creation issues his/her barbaric yawlp into the embryonic fluid and the ear of the sonographer.

*sigh*