I think it's safe to say that, eight months post-Katrina, New Orleans is still struggling. I think it's also safe to predict that it will continue to struggle for some time to come. Thousands of flooded and now mold-infested homes have yet to be entered as their owners deliberate, elsewhere, whether or not they can afford or desire to return to the city. Thousands more sit, gutted and vacant, and the rising temperatures that mark the onset of Louisiana's oppressively humid summer months will only accentuate the toxic effects of this virtual Petri dish of a town. Local officials are forecasting a baby boom among already abundant populations of rats and mosquitoes. The city is on the verge of bankruptcy, and federal support remains spare and begrudging. And the demographics of the recent mayoral run-offs merely advertise to the nation what residents already know; namely, that race is still an issue that threatens to divide our dwindling community. And the next hurricane season, which kicks off on June 1st, looms large on everyone's psychological horizon...

As considerable as the stress and uncertainty of life in New Orleans Post-Katrina frequently is, there are moments and sometimes even days when my family's life assumes the contours of "family" writ large. When, that is, I am, by grace or necessity, able to immerse myself single-mindedly in the comfortingly regular hurdles of mothering and partnership. This past weekend was one of those times. My three-year-old, Dylan, is finally learning to use the toilet. In fact, he is pretty much using it, alone and without prompting, every day. This developmental pirouette has taken many months to materialize. Back in August, in our former life, Dylan was just beginning to show an interest in potty training. At home, I had managed to time two or three successful ventures in the third and fourth weeks of the month, and at his daycare, he was beginning to experiment on a daily basis. Then IT hit, and all bets were off. Dylan would not go anywhere near his brightly-colored plastic toilet until nearly six months later, despite my various attempts to lure him into the bathroom (a video entitled Once Upon a Potty for Him, carefully selected books with colorful images of animals and toddlers "pooping" in the environments unique to their species, and the promise of M&M's as reward).

Finally, just as I was beginning to wonder where I had erred in parenting, one sleepy Saturday afternoon, Dylan stripped off his diaper, flipped up the lid of his potty and unceremoniously peed. I tried not to make a big deal of it, having heard that a round of applause could generate performance anxiety and subsequent setbacks, but Dylan was clearly proud and chatted about his little victory throughout the afternoon (and about all of the M&M's he felt he deserved). This first success was followed by another and another until, at home this weekend, he wore "big boy pants" full-time and without accident. The fact that we could take a ferry across the river, on Sunday afternoon, to enjoy the city's annual French Quarter Fest, reassuringly packed with people, without our diaper bag, felt like a real milestone to me. Everything in its own time, I guess, I sighed gratefully to myself as I watched Dylan, upon returning home, dash towards the bathroom, pulling down his shorts as he ran.

The second developmental nut I've been mulling over of late involves the role of gender in Dylan's growing consciousness. While I had always vowed to raise a sensitive boy, one who not only felt abundant respect for the opposite sex but who would assume tasks and engage in activities historically branded as "feminine," I find myself, nevertheless, worrying over when and how to convey the appropriate cues and make the hallmark distinctions that separate boys from girls and "masculine" from "feminine."

Case in point: Dylan recently spent an afternoon at the home of a friend who, with her mother, roamed freely through the house on feet adorned with brightly colored nails. Dylan could not help but notice this proud display of colored toes, especially when his friend explicitly called his attention to her silvery blue ones. Two days later he gazed ponderously at my own feet and pronounced, "You need to paint those." So, suddenly self-conscious and acutely aware of my plain and unappealing nails, I did. Shortly, thereafter, Dylan demanded that I paint his, too. I hesitated. What message would this send? That it's okay for boys or men, other than drag queens, to paint their nails? Was it okay for boys to paint their nails? Or was my son a bourgeoning drag queen? I buried my questions, and smiled at Dylan. "Sure," I said and knelt down to brush his toes with the only color I happen to own at this point, a shade of light maroon that Dylan labeled "pink." He was instantly pleased at the sight of his toes. After waiting patiently for several long minutes to allow them to dry, Dylan paraded around the house on his bold new feet, pausing every few paces to gaze at them in fresh wonderment. I could not help but enjoy the moment, despite my reservations. Even Chris smiled nonchalantly, observing to Dylan that his friend James, who would show up later that afternoon in his Bob the Builder T-shirt, was sure to be jealous.

This was the day we went across the river, no diaper bag, with James, and his parents. We all enjoyed the music and the crowd and arrived home that sultry spring evening, happily exhausted. Dylan and James threw off their clothing, pulled on swim trunks, and jumped into Dylan's inflatable pool while the adults lounged around the patio and talked. Dylan made a point of displaying his toes for James who grinned and nodded as if to affirm "Yeah, that's cool." James' mother, who surveyed the scene from a distance, also observed, with a wink at me, how pretty they were. I began to relax.

Later that evening, however, after James and his parents had left and Chris, Dylan and I sat around the dinner table munching on hot dogs, Dylan held out his hand and announced, "I need to have my fingers painted." He then pointed at my hands and added, "You don't have yours painted." "No...," I answered slowly, removing my hands, self-consciously, from view, "I don't." "I saw lotta pink nails today," Dylan continued, as if in mild admonishment. "Yes, but did you see any men with pink nails?" I asked, my discomfort rising to the surface before I could check it. "No," he answered and paused, as if to contemplate this fact. "Well, that's because boys don't paint their fingernails," I told him, unsure of what message this would send about boys who paint their toenails. After a few moments of silence, Dylan placed his hotdog carefully on his plate and concluded, with seemingly perfect clarity, "I need to have a pink nail-painting party." Chris and I gasped at once, half amused and half anxious, and I wondered how to respond. Should I let my boy, clearly influenced by and open to feminine culture experiment and enjoy it? After all, I had no theoretical objections to mixing and matching what seemed to me to be mostly cultural props. Or, should I correct this misunderstanding, stomp it out and redirect his desires in order to fit better in the G.I Joe and sports culture of masculine society? It occurred to me that it was this culture that was in some perhaps unconscious way responsible for such unsavory incidents as the recent alleged gang rape by Duke University lacrosse players of a black stripper. Was that a culture I wanted to endorse, let alone nurture, in my son's impressionable psyche?

On the other hand, Dylan did express and had acted out naturally many canonically "masculine" yearnings. And I could not deny my pleasure at his interest in elegantly designed power tools, racecars, dump trucks and train engines. I could not, in short, deny my pleasure at his fascination with big powerful things. Or in his robust physicality and boundless energy. My pleasure, in other words, at his differences from me. So, where would I draw the line, or should I attempt to draw it all? Maybe, I reflected, this wasn't about me.

I looked at Dylan across the table and sighed. "We'll think about it," I answered hoping, secretly, that he would forget.