Fathers and Mothers

I come from a family of women. One mother, one father, three sisters, eleven cousins (all girls). One grandfather died before I knew him, the other was so scary I didn't want to know him, so two grandmothers. As a result, I grew up with completely erroneous ideas about boys. When I was in grade school, I defined them as either ugly or cute (most of them very cute imho). I learned at a very young age like first grade maybe? that they would be smitten if I looked at them with my big eyes and then straightened something on their shirts.

Fortunately I made it through my high school and college years without attracting the wrong sort. Oh wait, there were a couple of the wrong sort in college, but I escaped before anything bad happened. Then I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (became a Mormon, upon which my parents breathed a huge sigh of relief even though they were Methodists), and after a few false starts, I was blessed beyond measure to meet and marry a young man who turned out to be a gem, an uncut diamond, oh look at that, wouldn't that make a good title of a book about our early life together, and we proceeded to build our house of diamonds what do you know, there's another one.

We had eight boys and two girls. I had a LOT to learn about the nature of the male psyche, the differences between boys and girls, men and women, mothers and fathers. One thing I learned is that a father is not meant to be the male version of a mother. And it's a good thing, too, because then kids can benefit from both sides.

Just to illustrate in this excerpt from Uncut Diamonds--

"He picked up Jeff, Elizabeth, Alex and Eric one by one, until he had four laughing, twisting children hanging from his six foot frame in a wriggling, breathing, noisy sculpture of family life."

Now how many moms can do that?

Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there. I hope your family pampers you a little today, because you deserve it!