I can still remember vividly how my dad used to take me to all the shows Lea Salonga had with the Sanrio characters. He used to carry me on his shoulders as he tried to squeeze his way into the crowd up to the front, all because he did not want his little girl to miss the chance of shaking the hand of Kiki and Lala (the Little Twin Stars). I loved the Little Twin Stars because, well because I love stars: they fish for stars, sometimes they are illustrated as having wands in a shape of a star and where little stars also come out, and mainly because Kiki has a star on his back which enables him to fly.
My dad indulged those girly fantasy whims, but he was also not afraid to treat me like a pal, his small little best friend who would accompany him to movies like “Gandhi”. So from my dad I learned to nourish my budding love for the whimsical and the fantastic, and also to love good movies. And having been exposed to films like Gandhi at such a very young age (I was 8), my dad also encouraged my love for freedom.
I remember my mom, who enrolled me in a ballet class, and would always stay throughout the duration of the class, beaming proudly at her little girl in her black leotard and pink tutu. She would also buy me all these books, hardbound ones, with beautiful life-like illustrations. She would always admonish me if eyes would stray to the “cute dolls” section of the store but let’s me have my way in the children’s book section. So from my mom I learned to love dancing and books, and thank God, to not really like Barbie dolls. I remember the only Barbie doll I had was given to me as a gift, and not even a week has passed when my mom found out how I had cut it’s hair really short, and how I had destroyed it’s dress, trying to make it look more “normal”. What I enjoyed as dolls back then were those battery-operated robots that can walk, make noises, and had this middle portion which looks like a small “TV”. It is no surprise then that later on in life I am to have a boyfriend who loves to collect robots.
Now, the Little Twin Stars are no longer popular. (Barbie I guess still is, although I don’t really know if they have ever tried to make a more “politically correct” Barbie. Whatever, I still don’t give a f*ck.) The fairy tales I enjoyed as a child have been revisioned and deconstructed in a thousand ways. Instead of siding with Dorothy and wishing to be like Cinderella, I now wish to be Elphaba (Gregory Maguire’s version of the “wicked witch of the west”) or be more like Danielle De Barbarac (the deconstructed Cinderella in the movie “Ever After” starring Drew Barrymore). Time indeed raged on and rages on, re-shaping life, destroying and re-building, wearing and tearing but also re-constructing, shifting plates, giving birth, burning and quenching all at the same time. This cycle can sometimes be too confusing, and sometimes too exhausting that sometimes, all I can do is sigh and wish to be that little girl again … Oh well, I live in the real world. I cannot be that child again (in the language I use right now, that’s just plain bull). But cheesy as it may sound, sometimes when I feel like giving up (like right now), I look at old pictures, or very simply, just close my eyes, and indulge myself with a nostalgia bath. And for a fleeting moment, I am rid of all my angst, my vanity, I am free of all the adult bullshit-trappings … for a sweet, fleeting moment I am that little girl again, walking out of a movie theatre with my dad proudly holding my hand, fumbling through a pirouette or an arabesque with my mom never looking embarrassed, reading aloud the books my mom bought for me, looking up to see my mom smiling like an angel, pride and love brimming out of her eyes … for that candy-coated ephemeral moment, I am perched on my dad’s shoulders, not a princess but a queen, the Stars always within my reach.
