Anyone can fly

M, age 8: Will you make a Peter Pan costume for my Finn doll?

(She had me at Peter Pan. She had me at herself, actually.)

I made the thing; tiny green sock-scrap leaves sewn on tiny beige sock-scrap shirt, a messy torrent, surpassingly cute. And then I reminded her that Peter Pan is often played by a woman. That anyone could wear the costume. It was silent for a moment, as it often is when she’s thinking, and then she said, actually, her girl doll A. will probably wear the shirt every day, because of her dolls, she’s the most adventurous and flexible…

And this is how we raise them, how they lift off despite gravity, and perhaps even fly…