Femininity

This is totally frivolous and stupid (I know), but I used to collect tea cups when I was young.

I started collecting them when I was 10 years old. I used to hit all the garage sales around my home looking for cool or pretty cups, and spend the money that I found on the road or earned from babysitting.

Before I graduated high school, I literally had dozens of interesting (and probably worthless) tea cups from around the world.

When I moved out on my own, I lost all of them. I had to leave them with my mother and I never saw them again.

Back to the present...

A couple of years ago, I started collecting Fiestaware dishes. I love to search them out on ebay and try to win them super cheaply...it NEVER happens...but I love to try. ;)

On Friday, I decided to type in "Fiesta first" to shortcut through all of the second quality or damaged items that people sell. To my surprise, I came across this:

My First Fiesta tea set for two. Two tea cups and saucers, sugar and cream containers, tea pot and two 6" plates for the sweets and cucumber sandwiches.

I was instantly reminded of the years I spent searching for beautiful tea cups...and how much I cherished them.

I didn't realize that I had anything in particular that I would really want to do special with a daughter until I saw this tea set. Alot of people have a ton of girly ideas about what they would do with their daughters (playing Barbies, pageants, etc...)...but I really didn't have any.

I just figured that part of me was broken or flawed. My mother really didn't do anything special with me until we went Prom dress shopping, and I never played with dolls...ever. I never really got the concept of what you're supposed to do with them or what the purpose was. I never pretended to be a mother to any plastic incarnation of myself...I had a little brother and sister who depended on me to care for them.

So, I have worried that I wouldn't know how to play with a girl. I bought a doll house and I was hoping that in it, I would find some lost little piece of myself...Some small portion of me that was entirely feminine that I could share with a daughter. So far, it just sits in it's little box waiting to be assembled.

Christopher was so easy to play with and figure out. I am just so thankful that he has always enjoyed being read to, hiking, and watching/playing video games.

Now, I have something special that I want to share with my Delaney.

I want to have tea parties with her. We will make scones from scratch and pick out silly jellies to put on them...Have different flavored teas with cream and honey...Or just have water if she really doesn't dig tea. Meticulously craft little cucumber sandwiches and cut the crusts off. I will teach her how to create roses out of vegetables.

We can dress up in dainty finery...gloves, floppy hats, large pearls, clip on earrings.

We'll sip with our pinkies out, and giggle at our seriousness.

I am so excited to have found another piece of my original girliness to share with my darling diva, Delaney.

Quotes

After having such a wonderful night, I find myself reflecting on happy thoughts and good things this morning. I am so grateful for the beautiful things in my life.



"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."---Ashley Montagu

"I, who was never quite sure about being a girl, needed another life, and another image to remind me...I made you to find me."---Anne Sexton

"You were such a wanted baby. I would rub my belly in awe of your growing. Sit motionless waiting for your kicks and stretches. Think of you, wonder about you, wait for you---totally caught in the miracle of your coming to life. First child, child of hope, child of commitment."---Julie Owen Edwards

"One a child is born, it is no longer in our power not to love it nor care about it."---Epictetus

"Seeing you sleeping on your back among your stuffed ducks, bears, and basset hounds would remind me that no matter how good the next day might be, certain moments were gone forever."---Joan Baez

"Think always that, having the child at your breast, and having it in your arms, you have God's blessing there."---Elizabeth Clinton

"It is a feeling of intimacy and exclusiveness...a warm, lazy intimate gaiety. I feel a...need to laugh out in triumph, because of this marvelous, precarious, immortal human being."---Doris Lessing

"My daughter's birth was the incomparable gift of seeing the world at quite a different angle than before and judging it by standards that would apply far beyond my natural life."---Alice Walker

"A good daughter is like a good piece of writing: candid, lyrical, graceful, moving, alive. I have seen a young girl walk across a room, intent on her intense errand, and it was like seeing a voice become visible, as if not her tongue but her motion said, 'I will do this for my life.'"---Paul Engle

"I can do one of two things. I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both."---Theodore Roosevelt

"Children are the living messages to a time we will not see."---John W. Whitehead

"There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million."---Walt Streightiff

"A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The world tips away when we look into our children's faces."---Louise Erdrich