At the end of that exhausting day, I informed my husband that I intended to have only girls from then on. You hear me?

I

spent the day of my son’s bris in an on-again off-again crying routine.

I was sure the mohel had messed up badly. Why else was the baby spitting up so much after eating? It had to be the bris! I was certain he’d never fall asleep again that all of this was my fault because I’d cried so much in the morning instead of utilizing the time to pray properly.

At the end of that exhausting day I informed my husband that I intended to have only girls from then on. You hear me?

Well. I’ve since changed my mind but I still believe there was something to the tears. We have these delicious little boys tiny cuddly bundles with toothless grins and big eyes and we think they’re ours. But it’s a sham. They’re male. And every day makes the separation greater.

When I had a daughter she soon proved to be a very separate and independent little thing but I realized I can still pretend we’re one. I know girls. I know dollies and ribbons show-and-tells and final exams and sleepovers the things that make them cry. I know schoolhood kallah-hood and motherhood.

With boys you hug them and kiss them and sing them to sleep and all the while they are pulling away. It starts slowly little bits and pieces that hint at the different universe he inhabits. And then he comes home one day and shares his adventures and frustrations and you think what do I know about rebbis about fistfights? Boyish concerns and teenage angst and becoming a chassan? After all this they go ahead and get married and they’re practically gone.

It’s important to have daughters my mother says because they always come back home. It takes a year or so for the newlywed dust to settle for life to fall into rhythm and then they’re back lugging babies and bags spilling into every room of your house eating your food and looting your pantry just like in the good ol’ days. But the boys well they follow their wives back home. It makes me frown to think of my baby my little glory boy hanging out in someone else’s kitchen when he could be in mine.

I don’t confess my worries often for fear of being labeled bizarre. Glory Boy is yet a toddler. But call me crazy all you want it dawned on me that the time to gear up for these big and little separations has come. Because my baby is turning three. And when the curls are gone the guests go home and you turn to look at your newly shorn once-baby smug and glowing in his new kappel you know that he is not your baby anymore. He’s a man.

So I keep busy planning our first simchah, because all this ruminating is making me antsy. Something tells me I know how the script will play out on this joyous Lag B’omer occasion, b’ezras Hashem. There will be beaming grandparents, doting aunts, coffee and nibbles, one proud daddy, one Glory Boy.

Where’s the mommy? the guests will ask.

I’ll let you in on the answer: Mommy is bawling in the back room.

Philosophizing on separations has taught me a thing or two. That separations are awful. That separations are important. (Yes, dear, I know it’s painful, no more curls. But what would happen if you, say, don’t cut the hair?) That, if there’s no letting go of the past, nothing new can come about. (Right? Sniff, sniff.)

Toddlerhood must be abandoned for boyhood to be discovered, the cherubic, lizard-toting, nosh-hoarding boys need to shed some of their… lizards, to become men. And to create a new home, there must be some separation from the old one (shut your eyes tight).

All good and true. In the meantime, I’m grateful that my next child is a girl.

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 541)