fundamental differences in brain chemistry are at fault for the divide that exists between the perspectives of myself and my son. his testosterone-laden mind is aggressive and spacial where i am more empathetic and verbal. he needs to occupy a large amount of space, spilling each activity out onto the floor after brief encounters. he moves from place to place in the house, pulling costumes out of drawers, dumping blocks from baskets, crayons from boxes, searching out action figures he has hidden in the sofa (complaining loudly in unbearably whiny tones for hours about darth vader gone missing, only to abandon him again in some random locale). he is a sweet boy; a boy's boy. something i understand so little about despite having spent my formative years in a boy-crazed stupor, trying desperately either to attract them or fit in with them, trying to get them to understand and to love me. how self-centered and foolish it all was. it seems fitting payback that i should now be forced into the position of having to try to understand them. how else will i raise them but to uncover them at their roots, to understand what it is that makes boys boys. surely understanding will lend me the perspective necessary to stop from tearing out my hair when all that is necessary to them is chaos to me. surely insight will grant me the patience to wait through refusals to discuss one's feelings, or wall up my sanity against tidal waves of aggression, destruction, sudden outbursts of inarticulatable frustration. how i know love will have to be put aside for how i am able to receive it. one day soon enough my boys will push me away, will want to strike out on their own as men and i will not have the sobbing, screaming, hitting mess of a three year old clinging to my leg. certainly one day this will be but aching nostalgia. this will be what i miss most - the point in their lives when they needed me most. i am terribly saddened to confess that i badly wanted a daughter, that i might experience being needed forever and ever. i know that to say absolutely that i will not get the opportunity at the relationship i desire with my children just because i have boys is most likely a gross over-simplification of the matter, but i think it is highly more likely to be true than the alternative where my boys talk to me in ways that i understand and go on forever needing me to mother them. it is such a shame that i have the knack for empathy my mother never had and still no children to really offer it to in a reciprocal manner. as my sons are only three years and five months respectively, maybe i should lay off the future and deal with the current tugging on my arm.