my 8-year-old -- girded like a gladiator

written by: Nancy Shohet West

From under the table comes a rapping noise, like someone knocking lightly on a door. Except that it keeps repeating.

The first baseball game of the season for the third-grade league has just ended. There are eight of us sitting around the dinner table: my family of four, and my son's best friend's family of four.

The other mom and I exchange glances, both aware of exactly whence emanates this rapping sound. Our two 8-year-olds are knocking on their cups.

Not the brightly colored tumblers from which they are drinking milk. Their new molded-plastic athletic cups.

Up to now, it's been coach-pitch, coach-catch. But with third grade begins a new phase in baseball: The kids will be doing their own pitching and catching -- a situation that calls for special protection.

And the two baseball players at the table tonight are utterly fascinated by their new accessories.

Tappety tap.

"That's enough, boys!" we moms say, rolling our eyes. The boys giggle and smirk.

From what I've heard, I'm not the first to be caught by surprise when the instructions came to buy our sons this protective gear. Apparently, the boys hadn't expected it either, and the fact that they are now girded like gladiators fills them with primal glee.

I think I understand why. In general, ever since potty training ended, any reference to that segment of their anatomy has centered on the directive to keep their hands out of their pants. Now, we grown-ups are changing course and telling them it's something worth paying attention to. To the boys, this acknowledgment that their strong and able bodies require special vigilance is a captivating notion -- and is perhaps the first tangible recognition of the full-grown men they will someday be.

And that's something I'm not quite ready for. Not because I fear the discussions that will inevitably have to occur, but because I had believed that I was sitting squarely in the midst of what might be the most pleasant phase of parenting. With two elementary-school-age kids, we're well past the demands and exhaustion of toddlerhood, but still comfortably far from the clashes and anxieties of adolescence. Our days are made up of library trips and bike rides. A treat is soda before dinner. We worry about whether the kids remembered to brush their teeth after breakfast, not whether they know enough not to drink and drive. Surely these are our glory days as parents. And I expected to enjoy them for a while longer still.

But for growing children, any hint of approaching maturity is enticing; they race gleefully toward each new goalpost of growth. Seeing my son strut in his full baseball regalia reminds me of what a thrill it is when, as a kid, you get an unexpected glimmer of the respect you might someday be afforded as an adult.

I often recall the first day of eighth grade, when my math teacher, John D'Auria -- who this year became superintendent of schools in Canton -- gestured toward the Thermos on his desk and asked if any of us minded if he drank coffee during class.

It was a simple question, and yet I was filled with amazement that it mattered to him whether we minded. Years later, as I told this story to a former teacher, she nodded and said, "By asking that, he showed that he respected your feelings. That's not an everyday event when you're in eighth grade."

In this case, my son is discovering that we respect not so much his feelings as his anatomy. But even that is a big deal to a little boy. It reminds me that I'll have myriad opportunities ahead to make choices, right ones or wrong ones, in how I treat him as he grows into maturity. Will I remember to respect him as someone who will eventually be not just my firstborn baby but an independent male adult?

Well, this I'm sure of: It would be a lot easier to imagine that if he'd stop rapping "Jingle Bells" on his cup under the table.

  Published: Boston Globe, August 23, 2007

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