a subtle shift

there are four daughters in my family. it was a little bit like growing up in "Fiddler on the Roof." minus one daughter. and a dairyman father. and a matchmaker. and religious persecution. dad was the local Scoutmaster - tuesday nights were his "break" from the heady estrogen stew that was invariably brewing at home.

in my generation of cousins, the girls ruled as well. out of sixteen cousins, three are boys (and i'm not suggesting AT ALL that they drooled.) but we girls definitely had the monopoly at family gatherings.

my sisters and i are all married now (many of my cousins as well), and raising families of our own. four daughters meant four husbands, which immeditaely leveled out the playing field. then, the arrival of jack opened the doors for a new generation of boys. jack, along with cousins max and felix and nephew-due-in-january have all of a sudden turned the tables in one generation. where the men in the family used to retreat into small tightly-knit packs of wild-eyed brethren resisting the urge to run, they now have found reassurance in their numbers.

grampie, jack, matty, brother-in-law mark

jack takes his responsibilities as oldest male of his generation verrrry seriously. after all, it is he who will introduce his cousins to legions of action figures. he is the one who carries a dog-eared copy of "The Dangerous Book for Boys." his will be the Cub Scout uniform that becomes the hand-me-down.

so far, he is an exemplary leader-of-the-pack. he tries new foods, he hugs his grandparents, he negotiates squabbles between his younger cousins. he can speak at-length about The Clone Wars and Transformers, and is moving easily up through his Cub Scout ranks.

now, if i could just get him to clean the bathroom...