The other day at dinner my not yet 2 ½-year-old daughter, Frieda, happily announced that she and her 8-month-old sister, Rosie, “are princesses.”
And so it begins.
Being the over-educated, Subaru-driving, Whole-Foods-shopping Mama that I am, I was horrified. What does this mean? Who could she possibly have learned this from? I immediately placed the blame on Theresa, that feisty 4-year-old who should have gone on to preschool last year, but is still spending her days loitering at daycare, corrupting my daughters. But I put on my game face, and decided not to make an issue of it. By the time I refocused my attention to the girls, they had moved on. I was relieved.
I’m trying hard not to worry about the princessification of my daughters. At least not yet. At this point, Frieda doesn’t really know what a princess is; in her mind, the concept of “princess” is vaguely related to pink, fancy, and shiny, and therefore it is desirable.
The truth is that Frieda isn’t the only one with princesses on her mind these days. I must confess that ever since the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton was announced, my interest in the royal family has been piqued. And even though I wasn’t so into the princess thing when I was younger (He-Man and She-Ra were more my style), I’ve got a new perspective on it these days.
Yes, you got it right. I want to be a princess.
Think about it, people. I’ll bet Kate Middleton doesn’t have to cook dinner. Or fold laundry. (Not that I fold laundry so often, but I bet Kate doesn’t have to sort through the piles of clothes on the floor to try to figure out which jeans are clean…) I’ll bet that once Kate delivers her little heir to the throne, she won’t have to get up at 5-frickin-30 in the morning with a baby who refuses to sleep just one minute later, even on snowy mornings when everyone else in the house is asleep and there is absolutely no reason to be awake. The truth is that I probably wouldn’t mind being up at the crack of dawn if I had Kate’s ring to distract me from my fatigue. How I covet that ring. Unfortunately, this is the closest I’ll be coming to that little gem, and even my favorite knock-off is no longer available.
But wait—there’s more. Kate gets to ditch her last name. (This probably isn’t a big deal for her, as she has a lovely last name.) You see, while the Royal family has a surname, they don’t generally use it. Do you have any idea how much of my life I have wasted explaining to people that actually it’s Naumburg, B-U-R-G? I’ll bet Kate’s last name won’t be misspelled on the screen out in the lobby of Westminster Abbey announcing their wedding, but even if it is, she won’t have to worry about it after they tie the knot.
So, there’s my confession. Even though I dread the tutus and tiaras that will inevitably clutter our house, I want to be a princess too. And even though Harry is still available, the whole Nazi-costume debacle makes me think that the Royal Family isn’t ready for their first Jewish-American Princess.
