In "Love That Boy" (Harmony/April 12), I write about a lunch I had with a well-regarded business consultant, a mother and wife with two young kids—one boy, one girl. This woman, one of five sisters in a large southern family, long dreamed of raising a daughter in her image. As she put it: “A girly girl—you know, a sweet and loving little thing who might have a career and all, but she’d always be a lady.”

My friend rushed through lunch because she had to buy decorations for her daughter’s 9th-birthday party. “You know what the theme is? Star Trek,” she said, laughing herself red in the face. “My girly girl wants a Star Trek–themed 9th-birthday party.” Will she get it? “Of course,” the mother replied, “but I do hope this is just a nerdy stage that wears off.”

Her story is in the book as an example of the expectations we impose upon our kids – how we often view them as a reflection of our own selves, an affirmation of our egos and our last hope to be the people we wanted to be. My friend loves her daughter. She’s a great Mom. So why can’t she just let her girl be a nerd?

Maybe she can. Months after our conversation, my friend (she asked not to be identified to protect the privacy of her daughter) sent me an email this weekend with the subject line: “A poem made me think of you.” She warned that the last line would get me.

It did. My son Tyler is autistic and is the bravest person I know because every day he climbs out of his own head and interacts with the rest of the world. It doesn’t come naturally, but he does it – and it’s just one of the reason why I love this boy.

Here’s poem she sent me. Does it remind you of anybody you know?


BEDECKED
by Victoria Redel

Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.

He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock. Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings look too fake.

Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a boy’s only a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs, battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping
off tracks into the tub.

Then tell me it’s fine - really - maybe even a good thing - a boy who’s got some girl to him,
and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in the park.

Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means — this way or that — but for the way facets set off prisms and prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows - made every shining true color.

Now try to tell me — man or woman — your heart was ever once that brave.