I was a daughter, but I never had one. My sister and mother were daughters, of course, as well as all of my women friends, and most of the friends closest to me also had daughters. I now have two daughters-in-law, and I love them each dearly -- though like my sons, they are quite different from one another. I am a respecter of personality uniquenesses.
What it means to be a daughter is still sort of a mystery to me. My mother is a week away from turning 91, so I know that being a daughter can last for a very long time. I know that when I was growing up, I was expected to do girly things, like get married, have babies, become a homemaker. (I did the first two.) There were no career aspirations for me. In fact, my parents told me that if they only had money enough for one of us to go to college, my six-years younger brother would be the one to go. Interesting -- since I'm the one who has four college degrees, including a Ph.D.
And now I have a granddaughter, just about nine months old, and I think of all the things I want to do with her when she's older: take her to a formal tea service, have lunch with tablecloths and heavy silver, go shopping and buy her whatever outfit she wants, gift her with dolls, play with her with her dolls. It's unknowable to me whether I will live long enough to do any or all of these things with her...or if she will even want to. It also strikes me that my aspirations of things to do with my granddaughter sound too remarkably girly for comfort. Yet those were the kinds of things I did with my Chicago grandmother, not with my own mother, and I count them as some of the most comforting memories of childhood.
I just finished reading When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins. The book essentially starts with my early adolescence (though Collins does not mention me -- ha!). My husband is reading it now and getting more and more sympathetic to me by the page (which is not a bad thing).
Life is so different for daughters now, so filled with possibility. I wonder what it would be like to go through impressionable times of life in this era and not have to fight so hard for everything you wanted to be and do, to not be dismissed out of hand because of your gender.
I was the youngest of three daughters. By the time I was born my parents were getting along in years--too tired to remember to be as strict with me as they were with my sisters. As a result I had a very happy childhood!
ReplyDeleteWhat a nice placement in the family, Myrliss! I was a middle child (which is why I stopped with two, so I wouldn't turn one of them into a middle child). It always seemed that the oldest had advantages by being the oldest and the youngest had advantages by being the youngest, but the middle child had no advantage in the family and instead had to fight for position (or attention).
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