Running thoughts

Don't get me wrong, I love my boys. Even though they drive me up the wall.
(I wish I was a better more patient lovely fairy-of-a-mom like Anne of Green Gables, but I'm not. Sometimes I am downright mean like Ms Trunchbull. But I love them even when I am having the meanest of streaks. I tell them afterwards after I have calmed down, usually before we fall asleep. I think my get-out-of-jail card is running out though, but that's another story.)

Lately I have been thinking, Gosh, I wish I had a daughter.

It is probably my own damn fault. I never wished for a daughter. I always thought boys were more fun. I associated girls with flowers and tears and mind games. I forget I was never much of a girl like that--though of course I was always the Pink Ranger. Maybe I didn't like myself as much back then, so I subconsciously didn't want a weird sad girl like me. Ikram also wanted boys.

I remember the first piece of clothing I ever bought for Omar, even before I knew he was a boy (but I knew), I got him a super blue Winnie the Pooh onesie. I told Eloa that boys can wear it and girls can wear it, but truth be told I only saw a boy wearing it. I thought boys clothes were the best.

When I found out Omar was a boy, I was smug. Of course he was.

Actually let us backtrack. In my daytime dreams, I would imagine having four kids. Two boys, flanking two identical twin girls. I had chosen their names. Omar and Hamzah for the boys. Ilham and Ehsan for the girls (because even as girls they had to have boyish names. geez)

But after two kids, I am ready to call it a day. Not at all made like iron ladies of yesteryear, this is all I can handle in my foreseaable reproductive future.

And as I was running this morning, it hit me, Gosh, I wish I had a daughter.

I wish I wished for a daughter a bit harder. Someone I could dress in clothes prettier than mine, someone whose hair I could braid. Someone who would look up to me as their hero (boys belong to their dads, always). Someone I can pass on my "woman wisdom" to.

But it is an empty wish because a) I feel like I'm done b) Matiin's mom once told me very spookily "You will have boys" and c) A Grab driver told me "Don't have a third, it will be a boy".

I know I could probably adopt at some point, but it's not quite the same. Only because, there's nothing quite like the feeling that you've been gifted with a little person. That it is beyond your ability to choose who they are, what they look like, and yet when you meet them, they're better than anyone you could have conjured in your wildest dreams, and you fall desperately in love.

I hated pregnancy, but I loved having a baby in my arms at the end.
But I've had that adventure (twice!) and I think I'm good.

So to the daughter I do not have, I wish I had you.

I think you would have been frenzies of fun, insurmountably insightful--a kickass female of the highest quality. I wistfully think of our Book Xcess raiding and sushi-karaoke sessions when the boys go do their boring boy things.

I wonder sometimes if the first one I lost was you. But it is nonsense to think that way. Everything happens for a reason.

But hey, maybe the boys will give me a granddaughter. Here's wishing!