I look around my office and
see the paraphernalia that surrounds my desk. The stuff that lets you know that
motherhood has invaded every part of my life. Sure, there’s the computer, the
overstuffed filing cabinet, and the rolodex. But there’s also the vacuum
cleaner, the old diaper pail, and tacked around my planning board a number of
bright bold pictures drawn by my four year old daughter Jessie.
Then, there are my bookshelves.
Heavily laden monstrosities filled with novels, biographies, reference books,
and, if you look carefully, stand on your tiptoes and peak behind the old
copies of Ms. Magazine, Utne Reader, and Today’s Parent, you will find my
Barbie collection. My Barbies aren’t kept carefully in cellophane or displayed
in neat rows. None of them have been loved much and many of them are missing
their slippers or shoes or combs. There Barbies are no treasured. They are the
disappeared.
These are not, technically,
my Barbies. They aren’t the ones I played with when I was growing up. And I do
have to admit to having played with Barbies. Although what I remember most is
how much we coveted the GI Joe because he could wrap his arms around Barbie and
give her a real kiss, unlike Ken.
Just to show you that I’m not
totally out of touch, I do know that Barbie can now do weird and wonderful
things with her limbs. I just happen to have a gymnast Barbie right here I
think . . . . yup, just behind Gabrielle Roy’s Enchantment and Sorrow. She can
move in ways I never dreamt possible when I was eight. But I’m not really sure
what to do with her. Her and the other Barbies I have stashed in high out of
reach places around my office. This is where all my daughter’s Barbies end up.
Disappeared.
I always swore that if I had
a daughter, she would not play with Barbie dolls. Our house would be a
Barbie-free and gun-free zone. Of course that was back when parenthood seemed
like a great chance to do everything right. To change the world by bringing up
children free of sexism, violence, cavities, and inner guilt. But by the time
our daughter Jessie was ready for preschool, our lives had been permeated by a
different kind of struggle: inclusion.
Our daughter Jessie has Down
syndrome. In addition to her bright smile, her inquisitive mind, and her love
of a good joke, she has one extra chromosome. And that one little extra
chromosome has made some things more challenging for her and us. Things like
walking, cutting with scissors, doing puzzles, and making friends.
And our vision for Jessie has
at its core, a contingent of friends. Friends to laugh with, fight with, never
speak to again, go to her first dance with, and be there when her heart is broken.
But friendship doesn’t always just happen and for some kids, like Jessie, it
needs to be nurtured, practised, and practised some more.
I do know that Jessie loves
being with other kids. “Let’s go visit!” is a common refrain, or “We will have guests?” And she gets so excited
when asked to spend the afternoon at Tess’s or Charles’s house. I thought the
biggest hurdle would be making other parents feel at ease with Jessie, so they
would even consider inviting her over. But that doesn’t even seem to be an
issue, because they have now come to know us so well—from spending time in the
playground, on the streets, and at preschool together—and they know that Jessie
doesn’t require any special care of knowledge. She’ll let you know in no uncertain
terms, what she likes and dislikes and she’s a pretty tough kid.
No, the real challenge is
teaching her skill and, yes, preschool finesse, required to join in. Because as
much as she wants, so much, to join in, she can’t always figure out how it
works. Her current strategy is to wave one of her ever present trolls in a child’s
face or to grab a toy from them. At first glance, this looks like an aggressive
act. But all she’s really trying to do, in the only way she knows how, is to
get their attention. It works. But it’s not really the kind of attention she
had in mind.
So we practice alternatives.
At home, when we’re visiting, at school, in the park. We’ll stop to watch
children an talk about what they’re doing. Then, with a little bit of help,
Jessie decides what she can bring to enter into play. Tess and Natalie are
making a cake in the sand, so Jessie brings two sticks for candles and walks
over to join them. Instead of stepping on the cake, she puts the candles in and
starts to sing and sign happy birthday. Natalie and Tess move over to make room
for Jessie. She plonks herself in the sand, looks at them both, and says “I can
play?” They pass her a shovel and the grin that spreads across her face makes
we want to climb to the top of the rope tower and shout across the canal “She
can play! She can play!”
And play she does. When she
has a few cues and understands the game or the rules, she and her friends have
a lot of fun. They play dress up an store and bear hunt. They laugh, they
fight, they ignore each other, they take turns. They’re friends. And somehow,
through it all, they’ve come to know and understand Jessie. They’re more
forgiving of her quirky social skills than I am.
But, some of these friends
have Barbie dolls. Her cousin, whom she looks us to, has a Barbie. Laura got
two aerobic Barbies for her birthday and offered one to Jessie. This was such a
wonderful moment, I couldn’t say no. Barbie just ended up stuffed into my
bookshelf. Disappeared. I couldn’t figure out how to explain to a four year old
that I think Barbie promotes a hideous and distorted version of womanhood, but
trolls, trolls are okay.
It brings up an important
question though. Where do I draw the line? We’ve worked so hard to have Jessie
take her rightful place in the neighbourhood, amongst her peers, but we haven’t
worked this hard to make sure that she also takes on all the unwanted by-products
of belonging. I never thought that integrating Jessie would involve such
difficult questions: To Barbie or Not To Barbie . . .
But at four year old, I think
we’ll let her friends teach her about Barbie, because that’s what friends do.
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