Chipped Tooth Childhood

My two-year-old niece climbs stairs like a sticky toed frog – front hands mounted long in front of her, gripping steps above, moving on all fours. On the way down, she’ll reach for you and ask “Ayuda por favor”. Obviously, you’ll grab her hand, but rather than taking small, considered steps back down… She jumps, flinging herself completely forward, putting full trust into you, the tall person next to her, to make sure she returns her to her feet.

It’s not the only way she is a daredevil. She stands on her chair at the dining room table, no matter how many times she’s slipped and hit her chin. Up on this mountaintop, she’ll dance, and if you tell her to sit, she’ll politely say “no”. You ask again, and the polite no becomes a full bodied rejection, smiling as she thwarts your attempt at making her act like a good girl.

Inevitably, she falls a lot. She hits her head on counter tops, runs forward and trips straight onto her palms and knees. She somehow hits the same front tooth on her bicycle handle bars, the steps, the cabinets, the bathtub. Her stuffed animals violently hit the floor (correction: she willing throws them).

My two-year-old niece: she’s fucking awesome.

She can command a room with her voice, letting it be loud, full, big. Her girlhood truly is unfettered, unashamed, alive. I know there was a time I felt this myself. Young with wild frizzy hair prone to tangle. How big dreams seemed simple, with no idea of how to make them real. Telling adults the sweet nothings of wanting to grow up to be an actor, a fashion designer, a spy, a ballerina, all at once, it’s possible! I’d listen to my iPod shuffle, 68 of the 72 songs occupied by the miss Mariah Carey, singing along, convinced that just by serenading from my perch on the backyard swingset, I too will become an international-popstar-with-a-whistle-tone.

Creativity, whole, without shame. Where does it go?

Much of modern psychology encourages reconnection with your ‘inner child’, a supposed mythical creature layered under societal norms and consumerism’s sweaty palms that will be released from its shackles by just taking one pottery class.

No, it’s more than that, as these layers begin to envelope us at young ages. Youthful, girlhood joy is flipped to cringy, obsessive frivolity; young, boyhood sensitivity deemed weak and afraid. Over and over, adult trepidation is slapped onto children, verbally, energetically, and at times physically, pushing deeper the wide-eyed-wonder of a child’s perspective. A proliferation of man-made anxieties — for respect, money, proving your worth, finally meeting a parent’s expectations — are exported to the young. Adults greedily trade the playfulness of childhood with an impression of it as corny, cliché, messy, untethered.

In girlhood, I began to learn about womanhood, a place where I was vulnerable, veiled and predetermined. Through the behavior I saw and was taught, I learned I would grow older and become both prey and the moral guardian for those around me. I was praised for putting on the drag of womanhood – clean cut femininity, soft smiles, hands, hair, temperment – and in time, was told this drag will get a man to marry me, and then (oop, we won’t tell you how!) I’ll have children, who I will now put before my every need, teaching them this same procedure. My womanly destiny will be finally fulfilled.

Oh Mother Mary, come to me!

Blindly, you can walk straight onto the paths your forefathers set out for you, without a thought to if this is the world you’d like to live. The media and public grope at girlhood because, in a sense, it seems too innocent. In losing our own, we can’t bear to see it alive and well, natural and wild. Slowly, we condition these young femme bodies to meet their submissive roles in the future. To fall inline to patriarchal and white supremacist structures. To not question the road ahead of them, but rather, to question those who have decided to step off of it.

Parents, society, can act peremptory. Children are told “that’s just how it’s done”.

Bullshit.

While I understand as we grow older the daily tasks of survival shifts hands from our parents to our own, this doesn’t mean our hands must stay occupied with the tinkering of puritanical capitalism, even if this occupation gives us a sense of safety, a sense of knowing what we are doing, even when we inevitably do not.

Maybe we could use these hands for something else, rather than mindlessly laying bricks on the walls that divide us.

Have we thought about shameless creativity, unbound, feverish and selfish?

I am but a third through my life, less if I am lucky. I am still in my nascency. I am in my girlhood of adulthood. What have I forgotten about myself and my loved ones? Where can I rewild? Where am I happy with the containers I’ve built? Where have I let fear of judgment, disruption and loss keep me underneath the covers?

I’m at that age where more and more small little humans are being thrust into this earth by siblings, friends, acquaintances. These small little humans with no clue of what’s going on. Small little humans entrusted to those who I love, adults given the impossibility of raising them, teaching what it means to be a part of this world.

How wide my niece’s perspective must be. How (un)intentionally, because of jealousy, annoyance, frustration with childhood exploration, she’ll be told to reign it in. How the world will try and force her to narrow it. How we must let her and other children learn to swell and later de-swell, to take up space, and learn through hurt when they’re ready to return to play, understanding that relationships require this back and forth, the friction of persons looking after each other’s pain. How I can model any of this for her, providing an energy that doesn’t slap adulthood in her face, but rather, shows her the power of her childhood. How she see that she doesn’t need to follow the paths laid out by those in front of her. If anything, maybe she shouldn’t.

Hopefully, she won’t let her child become inner, that it can be part of who she are, at her forefront.

Because really, what are adults but just big grown up babies?

Big grown up babies that want to hold your hand so they can jump forward, recklessly, knowing you’ll be there to catch them. They may chip a tooth in the process, but damn, was it worth it.