We had the x of y discussions with LightGirl the other morning. I’m tired.

It is the beginning of adolescence and I’m tired.

This has been a long summer of vague discontent for all of us … and we’re all tired. Something is stirring. We’re struggling to rewrite familial roles in light of having this half-woman in our midst. Our various ailments have not helped this process.

We’ve been cleaning quite a bit too. As I’ve been recuperating I find I can’t stand the house any. longer. So … we’ve been cleaning. In part this was precipitated by a pass through the livingroom in which I chanced to spy crumpled underwear on the sofa. That was

the.

last.

straw.

One should never find crumpled underwear on the livingroom sofa. Well … the good news is – it wasn’t underwear. It was a crumpled teddy bear hockey sweater (in hockey they are called sweaters, not jerseys). Still … the shock factor combined with the recuperation factor got me going. So.

LightGirl has found all sorts buried treasure in her room. Her brand new hockey stick bag. Her old cellphone recharger (she thought this was left in a hotel room during a tournament in March). Every hour brings something new. Christmas in August. LightBoy is experiencing much the same joie d’vivre.

Then LightGirl and I looked under my bed. Now this is actually a fairly regular occurrence because it is where we store wrapping paper. But this time we really looked. And found her old Barbie carrying case.

That is somewhat similar to the case that LightGirl had (notice the past tense). We pulled it out from it’s “storage facility,” she looked inside and relived some of her Barbie memories. Then she very abruptly said, “I’m throwing this away. I don’t play with Barbies anymore and there’s no reason to keep this.” I had to agree with her. And I was very sad. But in that moment I appreciated my father.

When I was little and playing with Barbies I too wanted a Barbie carrying case. I wanted one just like all the other little girls. One made of (basically) vinyl covered cardboard with a snap lock and handle. They looked like this:

I’m not certain what inspired my father. I don’t know if it was finances. Or if it was that he likes working with his hands and wood. Or if he just couldn’t bear to spend money on cheap vinyl-covered cardboard. There are some things my father doesn’t talk about, so I’m not certain of his inspiration. But he made a Barbie carry-case for me when I was about 6 or 7. I don’t remember when I received it. Honestly, it’s been around so long now, I almost don’t remember a time when I didn’t have it. But here’s the terrible thing. When he first made it for me, I hated it. I didn’t want some handmade blue and white wooden box, with lovely brass fixtures. I wanted cheap vinyl-covered cardboard … sleek and shiny (and light weight) with pretty shiny colors, and Barbie’s picture on it. Just like all my friends had. My friends had beautiful, cool carry cases and they often got new ones here and there along the way. I just had my same old blue and white work horse.

I still have my same old blue and white work horse. It doesn’t carry Barbie treasures anymore. Now it carries my mementos from a life well lived. It also carries something else. Something more ephemeral. It carries the love my father has for me. It speaks to me in ways that my father sometimes can’t. My dad has many words for many different things, but for things of deep emotion he keeps hidden away. So I must search those out and find them in a blue and white box hand-made for me some 40 years ago.

I was thinking about that blue and white work horse when I read this article about girls in India. This article made me very sad. The intersecting curves of progress and tradition are making the lives of girls very tenuous in India. The female infanticide rate is highest in the wealthiest districts. I wondered about the fathers there who are reducing their paternity to a financial bottom line and missing out on the opportunity to build a lifetime with a daughter. I understand that the cultural mores are very different in India, but father and daughterhood are universal familial ties. What is the impact of reducing familial ties to a financial bottom line? How will those thousands of individual decisions ultimately effect/affect Indian culture? No one knows at the moment. But when I think of the inestimable value of a human life and how we assure our children of this each day in the thousand small and large bits of time and conversation, I think that the children of India are learning to evaluate life based on only one facet of human interaction. I wonder how this will play itself out. How will these cultures who have progressed so quickly on one face handle the change? How will the rest of us handle it as well?