Mystery

The Boy loves a mystery. Or perhaps, he loves the word, mystery. He uses it frequently. The other day, as his mother dressed him, he asked where his sister was. His mother, in an effort to focus him and just get through the process, told him she didn't know. He took this as a Sherlock moment and announced, "My sister disappeared. The case of the missing Flynzie. It a mystery."

The Boy himself was a mystery, at least until his birth. When we found out my wife was pregnant we debated up to the day of the ultrasound over whether or not we wanted to know the sex. Our decision to remain oblivious was finally firmed in the waiting room and the technician performing the ultrasound was informed. After my wife's abdomen was sufficiently jellied and the tech had begun to sweep the dodad left and right, there came a moment when he looked intently at the screen and then the glimmer of a smile crossed his face; he knew. It was odd to have someone I had only just met suddenly know something so very important about our lives and to have told him to keep it to himself. He had peered into my wife's womb and glimpsed our future with his device. We had traveled all the way to the oracle, entered the temple, and then said we didn't want to know.

When we left he printed some pictures from the exam and I spent the rest of that day looking at them from every conceivable angle trying to glean the gender of our child. How do they do that, anyway? It was a mystery and I was determined to figure it out. It was a boy; no, it was a girl; I bounced from one to the other, certain each time I had identified the anatomical indicator. My wife thought my efforts strange, finally asking, "I thought you didn't want to know?" "I don't want someone to tell me, but if I figure it out...," I answered back, peering through a magnifying glass at the thermal print.

Our OB made a note in our chart so no one in her office would let it slip out. For every visit during the remainder of the pregnancy there was, for me, a little resentment that they knew and I didn't, despite the fact that I only needed to ask to get satisfaction. Once, during a slow day at the hospital, my wife called up the images of the ultrasound on her computer and peered at them. A friend, a maternity nurse, wandered by and looked over her shoulder. She asked my wife, "Do you know the sex?" "No," replied my wife, "We're waiting." Her friend smiled, "Well, now I do." (How do they do that?!) It was one more person in the know.

Extended family couldn't understand why we had opted to remain ignorant. My grandmother thought we actually did know and were just keeping to it ourselves to spite her. It was a curiousity of our decision we hadn't expected. Eventually, for no reason I can now understand, I decided we were definitely having a girl. I was absolutely certain. My wife, made of much more rational stuff than I, thought I was an idiot.

At the moment of our Boy's birth, after all my thought, investigation, and even angst, regarding the mystery, I was strangely disinterested in his gender. It was, even after our doctor announced it, unimportant to me, at least for the first few minutes. I just cared that our child was there. The mystery wasn't the gender; it was the person.

For our daughter, I convinced my wife to let us know. I don't know that it was better or worse, but it was different. Without the question hanging over us, we prepared for a girl and looked at only one column of names. We purchased more feminine clothing to supplement the hand-me-downs she would inherit. I pored over her ultrasound pictures trying to figure out what they saw to pronounce with such authority her gender. I still don't know how they do that. Oh, and we kept that mystery - the gender - to ourselves, telling no one, just to spite my grandmother.