Through the Looking Glass

I often wonder how Sydney will look back on her childhood. I work so hard to give her the things I think she would want, but so much of that is really based on what I would want and in order to want the same things I would want, she would not only have to be a mini-me, but she would have to have had the same childhood I had in the first place.

It's a major parenting conundrum, I'm sure. I know my mother wanted pretty clothes as a child. She wanted her mother to see her beauty. So she spent a lot of time and effort shopping for me and having grown up with a mother who has always said I am beautiful, I never saw the need for the beautiful clothes in the same way she did.

I wanted a more whimsical childhood. I remember playing all of these imaginative games as a little girl and no one else seemed to get them. So here I am trying to provide Sydney with the most imagination-rich environment I can think of and I wonder if the whole reason my imagination is so vivid is that I was making it all up on my own.

So will Sydney, as an adult, look back on her childhood with joy and wonder (as I hope), or will she think the whole thing was just too silly.

I hope she finds the joy. I really do. But I have to prepare myself for the possibility that she won't think it's all as charming as I do.

Because, of course, if I do my job right and put the silliness and whimsy in their proper place, she may not need quite so much of it later in life.