When I was little, my Dad would work on his 1969 Chevy Nova. I would stand around, waiting to hand him the tools he described. He never really taught me their names, but described what he needed. I got older, and Mom bought the house I spent my teens and adolescence in.
With her home ownership, I learned about home improvement. It started with painting. I eventually tiled my bathroom floor. I learned the hard way that you want to lay your tile and grout your floor before installing your toilet. Years later, I would learn the importance of leveling that floor first. I learned what a trap was and installed one under the sink my Dad put in a few years after he created the bathroom that allowed me to live in the garage in my late teens and early twenties. Parties with drunk boys that felt powerful punching through drywall meant I learned about cutting, and patching that drywall. I figured out the art of taping, mudding, and sanding a wall. I got the basics of electrical work in middle school, but learned the most when I couldn’t get piggy backed outlets to function once I put them back together. I have so much more to learn, but I know my way around enough to get second looks from men when I know what an impact drill can do, or when I can explain why I prefer a corded hand drill to a cordless one. I have an angular ruler, and a self-marking measuring tape on my Amazon wish list with a corded Dremel and a bunch of young adult novels. I keep a pocket knife in my purse - not for protection, but because they're handy.
Last weekend I made the boys help re-hang a bedroom door, and I re-caulked the bathtub. Part of that job required more caulk as my project to re-do the tub became larger when sealing baseboards seemed like a priority. We were in the store and a new caulking gun caught my eye. It didn’t have the caked-on smears of dried silicone from years of use. It was bright orange and shiny silver and it caught my eye because of the job I was about to complete. Every moment with the boys is a teaching moment.
I examined this new toy and eventually put it back but not before talking to my boys about it first.
I was first excited about the cutter for cutting the tip from caulking tubes, but it was the very thing that made me put it back. I prefer making a small cut at a 45 degree angle. This is easiest with a razor knife. The cutter didn’t offer enough control. It had a pin like all caulking guns do for puncturing the tubes. I explained this as I was putting it back and the family in the aisle with us was going about their shopping. As I put it back, there was a man with his family that was paying attention to mine. He asked my sons if I was their Mom or Sister because that impacted things somehow. He told them he was impressed with my knowledge and that I was spot on. That moment was huge for me. Normally, men feel threatened by what I know. Or they don’t believe me when I say I swapped out my sink and vanity on my own. I’m used to that. I’m not used to praise when I bend gender norms. But I’m used to a reaction.
In the car, while still glowing about that moment, I realized that despite who I showed up as to that man in the store, my kids see me differently. My son immediately diffused the situation. Of course, mom was always more interested in learning from Grampa than Dad was. At first, I was frustrated that my moment was deflected by his Dad. It was my moment, and I was hurt that it was stolen. Over the next few days, I realized I was focused in the wrong direction.
My son didn’t react to me being different and I didn’t know it would bother me until it did. I am raising kids that see mom’s handy side as completely normal. It’s fine that I can do what I can do because it’s normal that I would. He didn’t see gender in my ability to use a drill or know my way around anchors and countersinking a screw. Of course, Mom can do anything. Why wouldn’t I be able to do what he sees as consistent from me?
I’m raising a feminist man and it feels like a gut punch when he doesn’t do what I expect him to do because it’s what I’m used to. Change feels different and in that moment it was painful, but stretching beyond that moment and shifting my perspective just enough, I could see that how some strange man sees me is nothing to what my sons see me as, and how they see the world. I’m a proud Mom raising a feminist son.