Audun, who is five, went with his Grandmother Alicia and I to the Martinsdale Hutterite Colony for a visit and viewing of the new house of
a soon-to-be bride. Alicia encouraged Audun to play outside with the colony kids. I watched him from the window. Audun, with his chin in his fists sat on the front stoop faced with a bevy of little girls dressed and hovering like starlings. They stared and said little, just flitting around in a flock. Behind them, a few bigger boys road identical homemade scooters up and down the sidewalk. Audun sat firm until finally he skirted around the girls in a sprint and took off down the sidewalk toward the boys. Alicia asked the girls to watch out for him, but when he finally found us later his eyes were red and teary. He stomped his foot and said, “I don’t need watching, not by girls!” Was he playing out an old cultural childhood separation of boys and girls or reacting to the radical difference in gender rolls in the Hutterite community?
