Peggy Orenstein is joining Catherine Newman in the pantheon of My Favorite Modern Writers. I read her NYT article, What’s Wrong With Cinderella? this morning and it got me thinking about my conflicts over Grace’s nascent princess fascination. The stat about girls with the most conventionally held beliefs being more likely to be depressed and less likely to use contraception (gasp!) really makes me sad – but also validates so many of the concerns I have about raising a girl.

I love that Peggy cites “The Paper Bag Princess,” long one of my favorite children’s books. One of my beloved teachers at Exeter gave it to me at graduation, and I’ve since read it hundreds of times to Grace and given it at many birthdays. I guess I don’t care if Grace wants to be a princess, as long as she still wants to be strong and smart and all of those other things. But that emphasis on being perfect, being everything, just falls into the trap exposed by the Girls Inc study that Orenstein mentions.

It’s hard to avoid confronting my own deep-seated gender expectations as I watch Grace veer between playing dragon with the boys and playing Snow White with the girls. I realize that my outsize pride at her choice of firefighter as a Halloween costume reflects the inherent value that I place on a girl with tomboyish leanings. At the end of the day I suppose it’s as simple as acknowledging (and oh, how this admissions pains me) that I am most comfortable with Gracie becoming the kind of little girl I was – athletic, rule-following, high-achieving, perfectly happy playing soccer in the mud with the boys, but also blessed with close female friendships and as interested in clothes and teeny bopper pop stars as the rest of the girls.

In that uncomfortable reflection, I am forced to accept that I’m exactly the kind of pleasing, all-things-to-all-people kind of girl that emerged from the Girls Inc study. So how am I really positioned to do anything other than drive Gracie into the same trap? This is the kind of foxhole of thinking that parenting has introduced me to. I suppose all I can do is validate her for all the things she does well, and try my damndest to withhold judgment as she makes choices that I don’t personally like. Easier said than done, no?

For some reason have had Crossing the Bar in my head lately – one of Tennyson’s finest, and a poem that always makes me think of my Daddy. Not sure why it’s on my mind – it’s a little gloomy, to some, though I think it’s hopeful and reassuring. Maybe it’s just the notion that I’m setting out to a new sea. So, for Daddy, I post it here.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Today was the first day I noticed it staying light perceptibly later; all at once spring seems visible over the edge of the horizon. This awareness of lengthening light always makes me think of Lacy. Who else is as attuned as I am to the rhythms of the world as we move from solstice to equinox, and back again?

Valentine’s Day. I normally hate this holiday with a passion, though I’m enjoying sending Tabblo Valentines … check it out. Really cool, fun, and easy.

I think most things about Valentine’s Day are trite and hackneyed and lacking in real emotion. I don’t know that I’m interested in romance, per se, though I am very moved by deep human emotion. I filled out one of those dumb questionnaires about myself today (and I say dumb in a non-judgemental way, because I LOVE those things) … and the answer to “when did you last cry” was “yesterday – I cry most days.” Carly responded and said, what are you crying about – is it x, y, or just from real emotion? And the answer is clearly Z. That’s just how I’m wired. That whole without-skin thing.

Songs that I think evoke true feelings, that I’d consider “romantic,” include:
Romeo & Juliet – Dire Straits
A Case of You – Joni Mitchell
Love Will Come to You – Indigo Girls
any Springsteen from The Ghost of Tom Joad
Melissa – Allman Brothers
Simple Man – CSN&Y
Easy Silence – Dixie Chicks
True Companion – Mark Cohn

I’ll keep thinking of more and will add.

And, now that I’m in this mood and cooking with gas, a few of my favorite words by others that evoke love, romance, emotion, feelings (this could be an epic post, so I’ll try hard to pick only a very few).

“I believe that without each other we are missing something vital to us both. I believe simply that.” – Mary Gordon, Living at Home

“Thank you, whatever comes.
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.” – Ezra Pound

“I believe in the soul. I believe in the dawn, the evening, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch … the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning instead of Christmas eve, and long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.” – Bull Durham

“He taught me to trust myself and not to settle for seeing things the same way.” – Ann Beattie, Jacklighting

“A magic person walked up to my life just now and my life shifted ninety degrees.” – Reynolds Price, Blue Calhoun

“To the one with her head out the window, drinking the rain.
To the one who sang me a lullabye over the phone.
To the one who, divining love in this rocky terrain, has made it her own.” – George Starbuck, dedication of Bone Thoughts (to Anne Sexton)