boys

as a tomboy, i am unwilling to cede much territory in the battle of the sexes. i have done a lot of boyish things over the years, mostly because i simply assumed i could. it helped me a lot to have that attitude. but there is a particular kind of play that feels boyish to me, in a way that i don’t know i could imitate, and that i think is probably important for my newly 16 year old son. it’s the horseplay, the arbitrary but good natured violence of my two boys, the sixteen year old and the 53 year old, that seems to reside somewhere in their genes, and couldn’t be replicated simply by making the effort. yesterday my two boys went fishing on the celestially beautiful orb river, and brought home a brown trout for dinner. then they threw baguette butts at each other, and did some swearing. it appeared deeply satisfying to them, and i was happy not to be asked to make sense of it.

wild-caught brown trout (Orb River near Avène, France)

3.