Fire-Girls

A few days ago, moments after passing a fire truck on the way home from preschool, the girls announced to me that when they grow up, they are going to be fire-girls. As in, firemen, but girls. And that they’ll work together, on the same fire truck, because they’re going to be best friends forever. I told them they could just call themselves fire-fighters, rather than fire-girls, but they didn’t like that name. Something about the “fighting” aspect of it, the same word I use for the behavior which they are regularly scolded/given time outs for doing at home. So, fire-girls it is.

String Bean then gave me a lengthy explanation about how girls can do/be anything that boys can do/be, which made me pretty proud. Hubby and I try to instill this in them whenever possible, pointing out when we have a female piloting the plane we’re on, or when we saw women hang-gliding in San Diego, or that my doctor and her dentist are women.

I sometimes wonder what it is they’ll choose to do for a living when they’re grown up and realize that being a princess isn’t a paying career. An astrologer I saw before having kids predicted that I’d have two children, one boy and one girl, and one would be an architect and the other would be an actress. He was kind of right, except for the boy part. I could easily see String Bean as an actress, as she basically is one now, putting on mini-performances all day long, from puppet shows to Broadway-style song and dance numbers, and her flair for the dramatic is no joke. At three years old, it’s hard to see Peanut as anything other than a three-year-old bundle of energy and big smiles. Although I recently saw that same astrologer, and this time he told me my girls would be an actress and something to do with horses (he guessed breeding or showing them). The funny thing is, Peanut is obsessed with horses, and he, of course, didn’t know that. My grandmother and aunt were both prized Arabian horse breeders, so I guess it’s in her blood.

For now, they are fire-girls. Ready to ride on a big red truck, wearing big hats, and saving the world from the horrifying sounds that smoke detectors make. String Bean has a serious fear of smoke alarms ever since the one in her room went off (no fire, just a dusty space heater)—to the point where she has trouble sleeping in a room where she can see one. She seems aware that fire-girls would make these devices silent, which seems very important to her. Even at four years old, it’s good to have a life’s mission that would make the world a better, quieter place.