Ten years ago — let’s all consider, for a moment, the fact that 2007 was 10 years ago — I was picked up, one day, from fourth grade by my grandmother.
She made “buttered rice” for dinner, as if that’s a real meal that a 9-year-old child would want to eat. We watched both Wheel of Fortune AND Jeopardy, an unprecedented luxury for my fourth grade self.
Right after Jeopardy finished, the house phone rang. My grandmother, my two brothers and I froze. We answered and listened, with bated breath. It was a girl! I shrieked. I think I did a victory lap around my house. One of my brothers cried. The female-male ratio in my household was equal, and all was right in the world.
In a week, my sister will turn 10. On International Women’s Day, I can’t help but think about the world she inhabits, and the one she will, someday, inherit. Ten years is a big age gap. I watched my sister grow up and, in doing so, relived my own childhood.
My sister is so smart, so good at the subjects that little girls are assumed to fail. I watch her multiply and divide gleefully — will she be one of four girls in a 25-person math class, like I was? Will she, too, feel so uncomfortable, so alone, in the classroom that she will gradually decry math as a foreign language, unavailable to her as a suitable pursuit?
We watch the movies I loved as a little girl together. How did I never notice the infuriating passivity of Sleeping Beauty, or the literal incapacitation of Ariel, only solvable through her ensnarement of a mate? I hate Disney, and I hate myths about female intelligence and I hate any societal construction that could ever make my thoughtful, self-possessed, funny, weird little sister feel like she is any less deserving of anything, ever, than her male counterparts.
Ten years ago, I went to New York City with my mom. We ordered custom pillows off of the hotel’s pillow-room-service menu, ate huge amounts of pasta and saw Wicked. In a week, I’ll fly up to New York City to meet my mom and sister. We’ll see Wicked, and probably eat huge amounts of pasta. Who knows, maybe a pillow-room-service will be involved.
Time is weird. I don’t feel, after all, so incredibly distinct from that 9-year-old who wandered New York City with her mom. I still love pasta; I still know every word to every song from Wicked; I’m still slightly intimidated by the sheer scale of New York. I still depend completely upon my mom for advice and inspiration. Then, I didn’t have the consideration of a younger presence, looking to me for advice.
I consider, now, how my attitude and my aspirations will shape her conception of herself. What kind of role model will I be for her? Hopefully, one like my own mom: smart and self-assured and empathetic and always, always there for her. I can’t change the world at large (yet) that my sister lives in.
