Disclaimer:  I don’t have a daughter. (I have four sons.)

Disclaimer:  I wanted a daughter.  (I have bought three baby dolls for my sons.)

Disclaimer:  I kind of like princesses.  (I wanted to see The Princess and the Frog and Tangled. I recently bought a Beauty and the Beast Christmas DVD.)

Disclaimer:  I wish I could fit into one of those tulle skirts still. (I make do with tights and hip ankle boots.)

Even so, the other day, I heard an interview with Peggy Orenstein, author of a new book titled, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. In the book, which I have not (disclaimer) read, the author talks about the effects of pink sparkly princess gowns.  She notices them everywhere, bombarding our daughters.  (Following the above interview, you can also check out a summary of Orenstein’s thoughts about the strong reactions her observations have provoked.

I don’t have a daughter.  I lost my Mom this year.  I miss her.  I miss doing girly stuff with her.  She bought me tons of dolls and barbies. I still have one of my first ones ever–Baby Secret.  I loved to shop with Mom.  Thank goodness for my sister because she has, for sure, helped to fill that girl gap I needed as Mom declined. In fact, the first real great set of barbie clothes I got was completely made by my older sister, everything from mod 60′s pea coats to evening wear!  Luckily, I have a couple of girly girl friends too who give me that pink fix.

I get what Orenstein is saying.  I think any gender trend, especially one in which girls are encouraged to grow up too quickly (that includes wearing make up, and dressing like a “hootchie momma,” as one of my friends refers to age inappropriate clothing) is not helpful or healthy.  At 50, I can promise everyone who reads this blog that there’s plenty of time to wear make up.  I’m quite thankful for it nowadays.

Of course, I’m a late bloomer.  I had my first baby when I was 44.  If anything, I spent a lot of my adult life immersed in my vocation as a pastor.  I almost missed the “happy ending” with children. And the truth is, the happy ending is always a work in progress.  That’s what we need to tell all our kids.

So what does this book’s thesis have to do with my boys.  I believe that moms of sons need to bring boys and girls together.  Find common ground.  I always wanted a slot car set as a kid.  Two of my little boys, who love their manly super heros and cars, also love to pretend they are daddies and hold their babies and wash them in the bath tub and put on a diaper.  After all, daddies are princes not because they sweep you off your feet into forever after, but because, if we’re lucky, they are good role models in how to love women and children.

That’s one reason Santa brought us a cabbage patch doll this year and no more transformers or super heros.  Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t throw away the pretend capes.  I’m hoping my boys will grow up into men who shape the word “hero” into very daring domestic do-gooding.

Big Boy with Grandma October 2, our last real visit.

I have not posted since October 7.  My mom died October 11.  She had been in hospice at her nursing care facility after losing 13 pounds.   Mom had been on a slow decline for almost five years. She hung in there, and there were a number of times I thought we’d lose her, but she was tough, and she had a strong spirit in spite of her declining health and mental abilities.

She lit up when family came to visit, and she loved our oldest.  For much of the first three and half years of his life, Big Boy went to see Grandma every week.  The last visit, a beautiful Sunday afternoon, we took our entire crew.  It was a great visit.

My mother loved pop culture.  She taught me to love the old movies she’d seen as a kid, and she loved musicals, including and, of course, “The Wizard of Oz,” “Mary Poppins,” and “The Sound of Music.”  One of the greatest joys of my life was taking her to New York to see Broadway shows.  We spent five days seeing, “Ragtime,” “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” “High Society,” and “Lion King.”  We had dinner at the Carlyle Cafe and heard Barbara Cook in concert over our supper.

She loved to take her grandkids to the movies.  I bet she saw “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” six or seven times, taking a different person each time.  The last movie we took mom to see was “Toy Story 3.”

Mom was very well read, but she also loved children’s books.  She bought a huge set of encyclopedia storybooks for my siblings and passed them on to me, the youngest.  Two of her favorite kids’ books were “The Little Engine that Could” and “The Velveteen Rabbit.”

Margery Williams, who wrote “The Velveteen Rabbit,” was nurtured by her dad, an English barrister, in reading and writing and encouraged to create.  He died suddenly when she was seven, and that loss had a profound effect on her books.  She believed that hearts acquire greater humanity through pain and adversity.  Toward the end of her life, Mom had a framed picture and saying from “The Velveteen Rabbit” hanging in her office.

The story’s about a young boy who receives a toy rabbit at Christmas, but he quickly discards it after the bustle of the holiday.  In the boy’s nursery the rabbit is looked down on by the fancier wind up toys, but a skin horse tells him they will eventually break.  The rabbit, he says, has the potential to become real.

“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others.  He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces.  He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else.  For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

“What is Real?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room.  “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”  “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.  “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.  “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once,” like being wound up, “he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,”  said the Skin Horse. “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often  happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are Real?”  said the Rabbit.  And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.  But the Skin Horse only smiled.  “The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,”  he said.  “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again.  It lasts for always.”

Mom had her faults, as we all do, but she loved deeply.   Mom will always be real to me.   I hope that I can someday be that real for my children.