I Adore Being A Girl

For the first many months of her life, Babygirl did not really have her own toys.  She had plenty to play with — our apartment is chock-a-block with playthings — but none of them were hers; they were LittleMan’s hand-me-downs, or (even better!), his favorite cars/trucks/Legos…In other words, if LittleMan is interested in it, it has to be good.

As she has become increasingly mobile, this has become an increasingly fractious issue; in fact, at Christmastime Santa wisely delivered TWO Toy Story action figures and TWO “LittlePeople” vehicles and TWO sets of Legos, thereby offsetting (or at least delaying) some of the drama.  (Love that Santa.  He thinks things through.)

One day we were hanging out with some friends, parents of two older children, who have long since moved on to the iPad and the Wii and robotics of various forms.  In their home is a playroom full of “baby toys” for my kids to raid with abandon whenever we go over there.  This is how Babygirl found herself in possession of a dolly.

The dolly bears many of the scars of too much love.  She has no clothes; her soft white body and the joints where the plastic arms, legs, and head connect are exposed; her head is a bit scuffed.  And, after an unfortunate incident involving a glass of red wine, the arm of the couch, and the toybox beneath, she is stained a rather gruesome-looking pink.  But with the right squeeze she still laughs and cries as she is meant to, and Babygirl embraced her immediately.

The adults looked up from dinner that evening to find Babygirl toddling out of the playroom, holding the dolly against her shoulder, murmuring “Night-night, shhhh, night-night.”  She paused, and slowly rocked back and forth with the dolly before laying her down.  After a quick scan of the room, she bolted over and nabbed the napkin from my lap, which she then wrapped around the dolly like a swaddle.  “Shhh.  Shhh.”

“That’s it!” said our friend.  “She is taking that home with her tonight.”
“It’s about time!” said my mom, turning to me.  “I told you she needed a dolly.”

Gender norms are a curious thing.  My kids squabble over pretty much everything, from sippy cups to my lap to Daddy’s tickles to Woody and Jesse, but they have never once squabbled over the dolly.  The dolly is Babygirl’s, no mistake about it.  She is the mommy and that is her baby and no dishtowel is safe since that baby came home, so busy is she wrapping the dolly up and putting her Night-Night.  Having only a sister myself, I have no basis of comparison on brothers and sisters, but I am amused at how naturally my daughter assumed the mantle of “maternal” while my son has never once displayed such an inclination.

Nature, nurture.  Tomato, tomahto.

Lately LittleMan has been very interested (read: completely obsessed) with Star Wars.  You know who else was obsessed with Star Wars as a kid?  ME.  I had the full-color photo book and many of the action figures, which I would gather up and bring to show my neighbor, who had the Millennium Falcon and the Trash Compactor.  (Boys.  They have all the luck.)  But I yearned — yearned! — for Princess Leia in a dress.  I had Princess Leia in combat gear, Princess Leia with machine gun, but despite my dear dad’s valiant search, we could not find her in that white gown.  Which was obviously her prettiest look.  Duh.  When I dressed as Princess Leia for Halloween in Kindergarten, you can be darned sure I wore a big white shirt with a belt, and my poor mom did her best to turn that pageboy into two side buns.  Galactic glamour or bust, that’s me.

Years later, when I was recently married, I shared this story with a colleague of mine, who as it turned out was something of a sci-fi nut.  She attended a convention (!)  one weekend and returned with a new-in-the-box, rather heavily muscled Princess Leia action figure in flowing white robes, which she left on my desk.

It was, honestly, one of the most touching things a relative stranger has ever done for me.

For years and years, I have been saving Princess Leia in her original packaging for the daughter I was destined to have.  She has traveled in boxes from apartment to apartment, waiting to be played with by another little girl, who would appreciate her singular fashion choices (that snail ‘do!) as her mother once did.  But one Saturday night last month, after Babygirl had gone to bed and LittleMan was playing with his Luke Skywalker and Han Solo Lego minifigures, I remembered her.

“LittleMan, I have something for you,” I said (and as the Great Gods of eBay howled in pain), I tore through the ancient glue on Princess Leia’s plastic prison and set her free.

And so it was that after all these years, Princess Leia-in-a-dress found herself in the hands of a little boy.  He is not interested in her dress (in fact, he ditched her skirt immediately, the better to move her legs), but she can wield a tiny plastic weapon and — more importantly — she completes the tableau.

I don’t know if Babygirl will ever ask me for her own Princess Leia.  When she does, I will be in a real pickle because I know how hard she was to find and I have no plans to attend any sci-fi conventions in the near future.  I will have to explain, then, that I took the one girl toy in the Star Wars collection and gave her to a boy.  I am a traitor to my gender.

Or maybe I’ll just find a cuddly Ewok and call it a day.  After all, Babygirl’s just looking for something to love.