When I Grow Up

Barbie was my favorite toy growing up. Hard to believe, right? First off, Barbie's got a bad rep- let me clear that up for you. Okay, fashion, runways, yachts, corvettes and condos in Malibu aside, momentarily, Barbie was an icon for young girls- and don't start all that "she's got fake boobs and fake hair and she's a dumb blonde" nonsense. Let's get some facts straight about Barbie. She was/is one of the biggest superstars in the world, and she's never even released a sex tape. She's got a pink corvette (we'll get to more of that in a minute), a house with an elevator inside (I assume she installed an escalator in 2002 as well), and like 60 professions- with cute accessories! Not only that, but home girl's a self made woman- ever notice Barbie only ever had a "dream" wedding? True story- 70 years later and Ken still hasn't put a ring on it, which is why Barbie dumped him for an Australian surfer name Blaine around 2003- also a true story. She's sexy, smart, sophisticated...the woman all little girls wanted to grow up to be. Barbie taught us that a woman could do anything she set her mind to... She was the Jackie O, the Marilyn Monroe of at least 5 generations. Don't give me that hype about her being a dumb blonde- she's a doctor for Christ sake. And a veterinarian and a supermodel. Can you do all that? No. And neither can I. Which is why Barbie was and will always be my favorite toy. Go girl.

Our parents taught us as children to dream big. Barbie big. My first dream was to be a lawyer when I was 6... I had no idea what lawyers did. I just knew they made lots of money and my parents generally supported my 6 year old career choice. My sister was going to be a supermodel and in her spare time, a supermarket check-out girl...because, you know, supermodels have a lot of spare time. My second dream, I remember clear as day, was to have a corvette like Barbie. A neon pink 69' Stingray, 5 speed, 300 horsepower with black leather interior, tee-tops and a black racing stripe to be exact, but you know, who's writing down details...

I've been following that dream path my whole life and sometimes wonder if I'm on the same road as my friends and colleagues. Something or someone planned out a lifeline for people hundreds of years ago that people today still generally follow. We are born, we are schooled, we marry, we have kids, we die. Ugh. Seriously? That's it? I'm here to have babies, send them to school so they can find a husband, have babies and die? What a miserable existence... no wonder the average life expectancy was only 35 in the 1600's... people were bored to death. Terrible joke. Let's move on.

Where is the paragraph in the time line of humanity for me? Where is the sentence about the dreamers, the rogues and pirates, the scientists and politicians who lead the people out of the darkness into something fantastic and grand? I can't imagine, after a mere 25 years on this little desolate planet, of knowing everything there is to know, enough to marry someone, teach them things and have children to teach as well. But then again, that was never my dream. At this age my mother already had been married 6 years, with a 2 year old and a 3 year old. And although I am grateful to her for the wisdom she tried to teach me as a woman, I could see something else that is inherent in many young mothers in her eyes. The faintest sparkle of longing or regret. Not about having me or my sister, whom she loved dearly, but for the dreams she lost or would never chase. The foreign shores she would never see, the posh boutique she would never open, the sunrise over Fiji she would never photograph. All those beautiful lost dreams, just gone. Are we as young adults forced down this path, because history dictates that this is our destiny...or am I part of the generation changing the way we think about life? I'd like to believe the second.

I should have, generally speaking,  been born a man. And not because I think men have more rights, or are smarter or stronger than women... Lord knows I've never met a man I thought was smarter than me...Maybe my future father-in-law. Maybe. Barely. But he's the head of medicine at Good Sam... I digress. No one believes in the mental and physical capabilities of women more than me. I couldn't be more pro feminism if I tried. Women are stronger than any man could possibly imagine. They weather unkindness, social stereotypes, heartbreak and injustice with smiles on their faces. They endure a menstrual period once a month, ( which, incidentally is like being punched in the balls repeatedly for 7 seven days straight) which is only nature's way of prepping them for physical pain of child birth. They've been politically and socially repressed for longer than our country has been in existence and still are in many parts of the world. And yet, their smiles stop men in their tracks, their kindness raises children to be leaders and their emotional velocity and strength would simply cripple a man. We think too quickly, we act too rashly, our hearts get tangled in our thoughts and in some bizarre effort to please or save the world, we are more often than not our own downfall. Which is why I should have been a man.

I'm not the pretty-in-pink emotional ball of fuzziness most women are, which is both good and bad. But I do believe I think like a man more than I think like a woman...which is mostly bad. I too am rash, charming with words and although loving, I acknowledge a thin calculated streak of coldness in me, that could easily translate to craziness or cruelty...but then again, history never remembers the normal ones. Maybe I generalize here, but most of the women I know around my age are following that other path I was talking about earlier. They're marrying, having babies, starting families. Settling down. That's what it's called. Darling, I couldn't settle in one place for twenty minutes if you stapled my stilettos to the floor, let alone the rest of my life. I'm drawn, like a man, to the call of the wind. To the fantastical dreams lingering in my thoughts, the adventures just over the horizon. Everyday when I wake up some instinct inside tells me to run. To get on a plane, go to Africa, explore what is unknown, find the cure for some illness, sail on a ship with crisp white sails into the deep bright blue. Look for that dream, wherever or whatever is it. Let the wind take me where it will, come back with mountains of treasure and claim some new city in the name of independence and freedom and glory. Like a man, I crave the adventure, the money, the fashion, the beauty, the knowledge. Is it naivete that spins my thoughts into the webs they are? Or am I just part of a smaller component of humanity? The chasers and the dreamers. The tiny percent who were meant to run forever, wild, never settling, creating a path through the wild debris so others can follow easily. That's what I want in this life. The journey- to find my adventure and lead the expedition. To be seen among men as an equal, a contender, a force to be reckoned with. The image of Queen Elizabeth I, Joan of Arc...those who cleared the path for me to follow, so I could clear the path further. To find my adventure.

A friend recently said to me, "If the 15 year old version of you had to describe your life at 25, you are exactly what she would describe. Living and chasing your dreams". When I was 6 dreams were just coloring book images that hadn't materialized yet. But they would. I was quite positive I'd be the proud owner of a unicorn by 1996. And something inside us tells us to hold onto those dreams no matter how crazy they are... I'm sure the unicorn is on his way. But sometimes, life gets ahead somehow. And we are suddenly 15. And the next day we are 25. And wildly we wake up mere hours later to be 35, then 45, then 60... And the dreams get stacked on the shelves in the basement because we are too tired. We have families. We are too old. There are bills to pay. We just don't dream anymore...
 
But not me. I'm part of the small but growing percent of humanity whose tiny paragraph is written on the time line in electric green. I will always be running, chasing, letting the summer wind pull me towards my destiny, standing on the prow of the ship, holding the rigging for dear life while the tropical wind tosses the boat and tears through my hair. I'll be swimming against the tides, and taking the fork in the road no one else wants to go down. I'm too fickle to devote myself to much of anything besides Manhattan but I know this feeling will never dissolve. If I live to 35. Or 40. Or 60 or 80 I'll never stop. I'll be running, chasing those dreams until I catch them. Clearing the path for the rogues and pirates behind me. Rewriting our time line. Forever.