Everything!
By Michelle Martin
When we choose bedtime books, one of Frank’s favorites is a Barbie book.
Not any Barbie book—it’s a Barbie picture book that shows the doll in all kinds of careers. As we page through, Frank points out the jobs that appeal to him: teacher, firefighter, pet doctor.
Nearly all of them have some connection to his life. When he talks about being a teacher, for example, he wants to teach preschool, because his teachers are among his favorite people in the world. And he’d like to be a pet doctor because he wants to help animals like our dog.
Caroline, the book’s original owner, chimes in with other possible career choices for Frank: mechanic, because he likes cars, or chef, because he likes to help cook.
All fine choices, I say.
But one morning, Frank woke up perturbed.
The problem, he said, was that he couldn’t choose what he wanted to be.
“Mommy,” he declared, “I want to be everything!”
Well, I told, him, that’s good. It’s good to be interested in everything, and you can be lots of different things when you grow up. Just maybe not all in the same day.
Caroline, with her 7-year-old sophistication, is already planning ways to balance careers. Some days she wants to be a teacher, others an artist. So, she figures, she could be an art teacher, or a teacher who does art in the summer.
Some days she’d rather be a pop singer, or the first woman to play major league baseball. She knows those are a little less likely, but I always tell her she’s welcome to give them a try.
Through it all, she says, she wants to be a mom. She often asks me if being a mom is fun (Yes.) or if it’s hard (Sometimes, but worth it.).
What seems interesting to me is that she has no doubt that she will have some kind of job, even if it’s volunteer, and be a wife and mother. How times have changed.
Frank, meanwhile, has taken over more than her Barbie picture book. He likes Barbie dolls, too—especially driving them around in their convertible, and when it came time to get a fishing rod for his first fishing trip, he chose one with Barbie on it. He often cares for a baby doll in blue pajamas—a doll he has named “Baby.”
When he walks Baby in the doll stroller, rocks him in the cradle and shushes the rest of us because the doll is sleeping, Caroline tells him he’s going to be a good daddy when he grows up.
Then he looks at the Barbie book again, and a new career path catches his eye. This time, he says, he wants to be a “business executive.”
Why?
“Because I want to tell everyone what to do.”
Martin is a staff writer for The Catholic New World.
