Capes. Sombreros. Tutus. My daughter’s closet has always been filled with an assortment of politically-correct costumes. One minute she’s a fairy, the next a knight. But when my daughter declared herself a boy, my belief in creative play was tested.
My daughter’s obsession with the opposite sex began innocently enough with an intense adoration for Diego. Like many other preschoolers, Annabelle found this animal rescuer worthy of high praise, but in her case, the roots of her fascination ran deep. “My daddy lived in the jungle, just like Diego,” she’d announce to strangers at the bookstore. Although my daughter has a wild imagination, she spoke the truth.
Everything changed when I was thirty-three weeks pregnant with my second child. Perhaps the universe was punishing me for making my husband attend a children’s concert on Super Bowl Sunday because while rushing out of the house I fell down our flight of steps. Trying to shield my belly, my foot took the brunt of the fall. I knew instantly it was broken.
The mother I aspire to be would have gracefully gotten up and quietly explained to her husband a trip to the hospital was in order so as not to alarm her daughter. The mother I actually am cried while I bickered with my husband about whether our next course of action was the couch or the car.
The emergency room technician disagreed with my diagnosis and sent me home with a pair of crutches, claiming I’d be back on my feet in a couple of days. My husband thought this was good news – the fact that he watched the Super Bowl pre-game show in the ER even better. But I wasn’t so sure.
Maneuvering on crutches is never a pleasant experience, much less when your belly is the size of a watermelon. Annabelle quietly watched poor pitiful me hop into bed that night and awoke a different child.
“Mommy, my name is Christopher Robin.”
I played along, as it wasn’t her first alias, and I had bigger problems – my foot still couldn’t bear the weight of my enormous belly.
A week later, when my mobility failed to improve, I went for a second opinion. The doctor confirmed a fracture and gave me a walking cast. I felt liberated, but changing Annabelle’s mind, wasn’t as easy.
“I told you, my name is Christopher Robin!” Annabelle shouted to another child, who had had the audacity to call her by her real name while at story time.
Again, in theory, I would have said nothing – not caring what the other mothers thought – instead I whispered, “She’s pretending to be a boy.”
“Mom! I’m not pretending! I am!” my three-year-old insisted.
In the months that followed, she’d answer to Cody from Barney, Tobey from The Wilderness Family, and Charlie from Clifford but never to Annabelle. I resigned myself to her choice, introducing her as the “big brother,” even to strangers, when my second child was born.
By summer, I started to feel like I’d done something wrong. Humongous and hobbling, I could see why my daughter wouldn’t want to be me, but I was belly-free and walking again. Had I made being a woman that awful?
Then, one evening, while fixing dinner, something remarkable happened. I burned the garlic pita toast. That’s nothing new – I come from a long line of women who use a smoke detector to indicate the bread is done – but this time it caught on fire. Thinking I could easily toss the baking tray from the toaster oven into the sink, I opened the door. The flames blazed.
I removed the plug from the wall and headed to the closet for the fire extinguisher. I told Annabelle to stand back, pulled the pin, and sprayed at the fire. “Wow!” she whispered, as the white foam coated the countertop the way shaving cream covers her daddy’s face. When I saw that we escaped danger, I laughed. Sensing it was safe to approach, Annabelle gave me a big hug. “Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be just like you.”
Granted, Annabelle decided to dress up as Diego for Halloween that year and asked Santa for a Peter Pan costume, but her desire to role-play no longer phased me. It wound up Annabelle had learned early on what it took me years to see –it takes a special kid to play tea party all morning and make mud puddles all afternoon. Boy or girl – that is exactly the kind of child I want to raise.
Victoria Winterhalter is a freelance writer, whose blog, Befriending Forty, chronicles what happens when the person you thought you’d be meets the person you actually became. Help her countdown to 40 on her BefriendingForty blog.
About Victoria Winterhalter
