Portrait of a Fairy Princess Doctor

Hattie: My Fairy Princess Doctor

The other day my six year old daughter approached me dressed in her pink fairy wings, a tiara, black kid gloves, and carrying her toy doctor kit.  “Well, hello,” I said.

She grinned, wrinkling up her nose so that her smattering of freckles squished together.  “I’m a fairy princess doctor,” she announced.

And why not, I considered.  If you are going to do something difficult, like save your dolls from death’s door, you might as well look pretty doing it.  And be magical.  Magical powers would be just the thing.

It reminded me of when Hattie was four and I took her to the local library.  “Where are the princess books?” she asked.  “Because I want to be a princess scientist when I grow up, so I have to read all the princess books.”  Then she looked at me skeptically.  “Do you think I can keep them in cages?”

I love the way Hattie so seamlessly blends science and magic together in her fantasy world.  Partly because it makes me feel better about indulging that part of her that loves princesses: all the sparkles and pretty dresses!  Mostly I love it because to me it illustrates all that a little girl can be: namely, anything that she can imagine.

And I wonder, how do so many of us girls grow into women who never feel sure about who we are and what we do?  Are we magical creatures, with inhuman powers of nurturing and self-sacrifice?  Are we princesses, meant to be stunning, even while wearing maternity clothes?  Are we doctors, bright, intelligent, successful? 

I watch my Hattie with wonder, my own girl, and admire her intelligence, her inquisitiveness, her grace, her beauty, her grit, her determination.  I see her follow her imagination to places  where she can be anything, or everything, or nothing, and always feel capable and content.  There is nothing to limit her.  Nothing but her own imagination.