Holly Via Gorski

We’re at our son’s indoor soccer game, watching him wander around the court as if in search of flowers to pick. So far it’s been a mediocre game: two teams of 2^nd & 3^rd grade boys and girls, some running after the ball, others standing around or wandering like our son. Occasionally someone kicks the ball towards a goal. I think each team has scored once, though they don’t post the score, so it’s easy to lose track.

Suddenly this kid sweeps towards our team’s goal from the far side of the court. He’s one of the larger kids: not fat, but solidly built; his dark hair is trimmed close on the sides and sticks up bushily on top. In one gilding pass he sinks a goal and arcs away from it, towards his side of the court, back towards the bleachers where we sit. Now that he’s facing us I can see the look on his face: he’s mouthing a primal scream of victory worthy of professional sports. Wearing that look, his haircut becomes defiant instead of bushy and he seems at least three years older than his teammates. This kid is cool.

I laugh and turn to look at my husband.

“Did you see that look?” I ask.

He nods, grinning. He shakes his head and says, “That’s the kind of killer instinct I wish our son had.”

I look back towards the game. After a moment he adds, “Do you know who had that look as a kid? Your brother.”

I laugh. “My brother was born with that look!” This may actually be true; they didn’t videotape deliveries in 1976, so we’ll never know for sure.

“I had that look.”

I’m skeptical. “You had that look at age 7?”

“I did.”

“My mother probably has ten pictures of my brother with that look. No, more than ten.”

He points at me. “You never had that look.”

He blames my genes for our son’s lack of sports interest and instinct. The year I played high school basketball, my entire team stood up and cheered on the single occasion I fought another girl for the ball. Standing 5’10” at age 14, I had only joined the team so that my dad would pay for ballet lessons. I had no interest, no killer instinct.

I shrug. He can blame me, but it’s got to be a recessive trait because my family is full of jocks and sports fanatics. When I was a year old my mother broke her leg in a highly competitive game of backyard volleyball. That would never happen to me, because having a one-year-old is a perfect excuse to sit any game out.

“I wonder if our three-year-old will have that look,” I say.

“He’d better! Otherwise this baby is our only hope.” He holds up the baby and smiles at him. “Yes! You would be our only hope. Are you going to have that look?”

I have a hard time imagining it. I think he’d better pin his hopes on the three-year-old.

Our third child, a boy, is due in April. My husband and I do not have a name picked out and likely won’t by the time he arrives. With our two older sons, we brought a list of possible names to the hospital and named each baby the day after he was born.

A couple of nights ago we had a long (and initially productive) baby-name discussion. This is how it ended:

I said, “I still like Grayson. Or maybe just Gray. Something like—“

“Something Batman-esque?” He asked.

“No, I didn’t think of that, but there’s your comic-book connection.”

“Something that says, ‘My parents were doomed acrobats?’”

“Shut up! Are you going to let me say—“

“Something that says, ‘boy ward?’”

“SHUT UP! What I’m trying to say is, ‘Something like Grace, but for a boy.’”

“Something that indicates a possibly inappropriate relationship with my legal guardian and benefactor?”

I ignored that, but was suddenly struck by his earlier comment: “’My parents were doomed acrobats!’ God, you’re a dork!” Then I laughed for about five minutes straight.

Somewhere in there, he said, “Nice delayed reaction.” I laughed so hard I had to pee.

When I came out of the bathroom, he said, “I’ll let you name the kid Grayson if his middle name can be Nightwing.”

“No.”

I’m seven months pregnant and digging deeper into the storage bin of maternity clothes each week. Today I pulled out “the $12 pants” and thought of this story, written about a week before my second child was born (originally posted on my MySpace blog).

Monday, April 16, 2007

My mass and/or girth reached some sort of critical point on Friday and suddenly I could not pull on my maternity pants.  Fearing this might happen, I had purchased a pair of larger pants from the JC Penny catalog earlier in the week.  I wore them on Friday and Saturday.  Happily, they allowed blood flow to my legs while seated (a nice change).  Unhappily, they were huge, off-white and ugly.  I needed to go shopping.

I live a few miles from the shopping Mecca of East Pierce County.  This street has everything, including a sex toy shop, but for some baffling reason does not have a maternity clothing store.  I haven’t been able to find a metaphysical store either, although a co-worker says she saw one near the Best Buy.  I’m not sure she knows the difference between a metaphysical shop (where one can buy candles and tarot cards) and a head shop (where one can buy Grateful Dead stickers and things “to put your weed in, man”).  To be fair, they both sell incense and bumper stickers railing against the President.  But I digress.

Last night I traveled to the Motherhood Maternity outlet in the SuperMall.  I told the young clerk who greeted me (I later learned she was the new store manager) that I had about three weeks left (wishful thinking), had outgrown all my pants, and needed the cheapest pants and/or skirts they had.  “Cheap” is what Motherhood Maternity does best and I was at their outlet store, for Pete’s sake, but apparently my choice of words offended her.  She wrinkled her nose and said, “If it’s cheap you want, I can’t help you.  Try the clearance and “as-is” racks over there.  See what you can find.”  She waved her hand at the corner of the store and left me alone.

Luckily another clerk, a tough-looking older woman, had overheard us and wanted to help.  “What size are you, Dear?” she asked.

“Lar . . . um, extra large, now.  I had a thigh explosion,” I over-explained.

There was a beat where neither of us spoke and I almost saw the words, “The baby’s not in your thighs, Dear,” flit across her face, but she just shrugged and said, “That happens.”

She helped me find a $5 skirt and two pair of pants ($12 and $13 each).  She also suggested some other items –ah, upselling, I know you well—and in the end I left happy if a little poorer than planned.  I’m wearing the $12 pants now.  It’s so nice to have blood in my legs without feeling like a complete fashion catastrophe.

Yesterday I dusted off the Footloose soundtrack. After an ‘80s flashback afternoon, I drove home from work with “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” cranked up and on repeat.

The summer I was 11 years old I made up a cheerleading/dance routine to that song on my Dad’s front lawn. I put my older sister’s stereo speakers on the windowsill facing outwards and blasted Denise Williams over and over. (The neighbors recall that summer fondly, I’m sure.)

I’ve always known the lyrics, but yesterday I listened to them with an adult’s perspective. When I was 11 I didn’t really get that the song was about a guy who’s so talented in the bedroom nothing else matters. Lyrics like:
“. . . what he does he does so well
makes me wanna yell
let’s hear it for the boy
let’s give the boy a hand . . .”
take my mind to a different place at 36 than they did at 11.

Realizing this, I suddenly thought of “Annie,” my high school boyfriend’s mother. Her son and I never had sex, though that was due to our mutual fear of the Lord’s wrath, not a lack of hormones or desire. To us Annie seemed unnecessarily concerned with sex: overly cautious, prudish, even paranoid.

One day as my boyfriend was listening to Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough,” Annie turned to him and said, “It’s about SEX, isn’t it?!” When he told me this later, we both shook our heads and laughed. If she wanted to hear a Depeche song about sex, we could think of several more obvious selections. Silly woman. The song was about the rush of new love; how you think about a person all the time and can’t get enough of them. We knew about that from recent firsthand experience. (Silly, virginal teenagers.)

Nineteen years later, I can suddenly see where Annie was coming from. I feel as though a tiny crack has opened in the curtains that shielded her world view from me. Prude or not, as the mother of seven she was clearly a sexually-active adult. She knew what she was talking about and she had only her 17-year-old son’s word that her worries were unnecessary.

The Lord’s wrath doesn’t come up much in my household now. When my oldest son is 17, if he has a steady girlfriend they will likely be having sex. Thankfully I have a few more years before that thought starts keeping me up at night. But very soon I’ll probably object to one of his musical selections and I won’t be able to explain why. Silly parent.