8/13/10
I dug a pair of heels out of the pre-child archives to wear to work, and the child was so overcome with delight that she ran away with them while I was in the shower.
What happened to my shoes? I wondered as I got dressed.
They aren’t even Manolo Blahniks, poor child, not even close. Just a pair of loafers with a 2.5-inch heel. Sarah Jessica Parker wouldn’t approve.
The child got stuck with Grumpy Working-Runner when what she REALLY wanted was Barbie Mom.
I just read that Peggy Orenstein is publishing a book this fall called Cinderella Ate My Daughter, and all I can say is, I’m glad to hear this happens with biological parents, too, who can’t blame the baffling girly-ness on some mysterious genetic destiny.
Which doesn’t stop me from wondering all the time about the child’s mysterious genetic destiny. (As I’m sure the child will, too, once she’s old enough to understand.)
She came home last week from her first day at Farm Camp, where they had made peach jam, and said, “Well, THIS was the best day of camp EVER.” The next day, they made pickles, and we ate the whole jar that night (well, they were good). She told me all about “egg duty,” where she goes in the coop with a partner and carefully takes the egg out of the nest and puts in a basket. (Or at least, I think that’s what she said. Details are hard to come by, even from kindergarten graduates.)
Now, I know she loves to cook and bake and be involved with meal preparation (and eat; mostly eat), and also that she likes to sew (really! They sewed patchwork “quilts” in preschool!), and I suspected she’d like Farm Camp, but still, even I was surprised by the force of her enthusiasm.
Where did this come from in the rural Hunan Province of China? A farming family that cooked lots of great food while wearing princess gowns and high heels?
It’s too bad that my own grandmother (1900-1999) isn’t around—a farmer’s wife who cooked, sewed, and wove fabric on hand-made looms--because she was good at all the things the child is interested in and would’ve approved wholeheartedly. My grandmother could’ve passed on knowledge I just don’t have.
I zipped up my dress and went to the family room. The child was watching WonderPets with the shoes beside her.
“I found your shoes!” she said, beaming. “You’re wearing HEELS!”
She practically shone with joy and approval.
P.S. The shoes chewed up my feet so that the next day I had to wrap two blistered toes—in waterproof Princess Band-aids, of course!