Things I Didn't Hand Down to My Daughter
and what she will inherit instead
Greetings! The Ancestral Homekeeper is a newsletter dedicated to slow & simple living for all of us. I’m Kristina, and I believe that the way we shape our lives at home will be reflected in our society at large. By blending the wisdom of our ancestors with contemporary thoughts on mental health, self nurturing, and social justice, we can find the path to changing our world. New letter is out most Sundays!
She’s sitting near the tree, the glow emanating from the lights strung on the branches. The doll is in her lap, and she is combing, combing. She whispers in the doll’s ear, so low that I can’t hear what she is telling it. My heart explodes in my chest in a tiny series of eruptions and again, the tears come.
I was terrified of having a daughter. I had become a mother two years before, when my son was born. But when we found out I was pregnant with a girl, I sobbed. I didn’t think I was ready to unpack all the mother-daughter baggage that I’d worked so hard in therapy to understand and contain. Having a daughter meant confronting my own trauma that had roots in my mother’s neglect, indifference, projection, alcoholism, and, of course, patriarchal ideals of femininity.
I thought about the things I wanted to give her, the ways I would show her she was in charge of her own independent spirit. I wanted her to chart her own course, with lots of unwavering love and support from me and her family. I wanted to give her a love of nature and a passion for books. I wanted to teach her that her body is her own, and it never need look like anyone else’s idea of beautiful.
And I also thought of the things I didn’t want to give her, the legacies I refused to pass down. There’s not many, but there are a few.
For one, I didn't give her my name. She would have been the fifth to bear the middle name Franziska, just the second not born in Bavaria, and oh, how I wrestled with the choice. I knew I wanted her to have a gender-neutral name, one that could be strong and beautiful. A name that she could wear however she chose. Franziska was so cloudy with meaning for me that I ultimately didn’t think I could handle saying that name every day, continually remembering the Franziskas who came before.
Nor am I passing down the legacy of alcohol. It was handed to my mother (the third Franziska) at six years old, a piccolo of sparkling Sekt to calm her down when her mother (the second Franziska) left her behind to party with some American GIs. Beer was as plentiful as water in the years after the war, and my grandmother was desperate to snag an American husband. It was a daily flask for my great-grandmother, the original Franziska. As a single mother, she delivered newspapers and swept the city center, anything to keep food on the table. I can’t remember where I first read the line “florid with drink,” but that’s the phrase that comes to mind when I see pictures of her in later age. She could be manipulative, and threatened to put her head in the oven if Franziska #2 moved to America and took Franziska #3 away from her. So my mother was left behind in Germany at age 13, alone with her aging grandmother who could not protect her or teach her the ways of the world. Would the horrors that followed ever have occurred if anyone had been sober? I cannot be sure, but I have a hunch.
I put alcohol away for good about three years ago now, and my life has become immeasurably more joyous and rich because of it. My daughter is growing up with a mother who is clear-eyed and conscious, who refuses to normalize the casual presence of alcohol in daily life. Both of my children have an increased risk of alcoholism because of my family lines — I will do everything in my power to give them a fighting chance against the disease.
When I turned 18, my mother told me to pack up whatever I wanted to keep from my childhood, as she didn’t want to deal with any of it anymore. I sat in the small storage room of her apartment’s carport, and sifted through my lifetime’s worth of books, toys, award ribbons, baby clothes, old pointe shoes, notebooks, and journals. I felt completely numb. Even so, I had the presence of mind to preserve a few picture books and a little rag doll to give to my future children one day. I left with a single, medium-sized U-Haul box, with all the physical memories of my childhood that I will ever have. So I was able to pass down a few tokens from my girlhood, though nowhere near what I wish I’d be able to retain.
Of course, I couldn’t pass down what I never had. We were always too poor to afford the big brand name toys — and that included the American Girl Felicity doll, my first experience with unrequited love and longing. She had red hair and green eyes like me, and she was from the colonial period in American history. The whole American Girl doll series was beautiful and expensive, and I don’t personally know a single Xennial American female who didn’t either have one of these dolls, or long for them like I did. I had all six of Felicity’s books and read them over and over again. But it was the 18 inch doll, and all of her stunning colonial dresses and accessories, that I coveted. Her full-sized four-poster bed with a red checkered canopy. Her mahogany wardrobe. I obsessed over every single scrap of American Girl catalog I could get my hands on, reading them over and over until they were tattered and taped together. I was in my teen years when I finally put down the catalogs and accepted that I’d outgrown dolls anyhow.
When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter decades later, I remembered Felicity. I searched for her on eBay, and almost spent hundreds of dollars on various Felicitys without ever actually clicking Buy Now. I remembered what I did want to hand on to my daughter — the freedom to chart her own course and follow her own passions. I didn’t want to foist my legacy of longing on to her, forcing her to play with a relic of my own childhood that I never actually got to experience. I put the dream of Felicity away again.
The funny thing about motherhood (as if there is only one!) is that it has a way of laying you out, totally open and exposed. They say to be a parent is to forever have your heart live outside of your body, and it is true. My daughter was born, and she is exactly as I expected her to be — smart, funny, fierce, independent, and kind. It is through motherhood that I have come into some of my deepest friendships, and feeling the love they have for me and my children has been astonishing. When you get two women together, who are both living with their hearts outside of their bodies, you can see into each other’s souls in a way that is deeply intimate. You may not know every detail about their life like you did in your childhood friendships, but you know their true essence because you can see inside of them. You can see the product of their love, running around and playing on the swing set with the products of your love. You share your dreams and frustrations in such an effortless way, because you know they have experienced the exact same feelings.
At some point, about a year ago, I shared the story of Felicity with my dearest friend. We talked about the American Girl dolls, our own experiences with them, mother-daughter relationships, all of it. It was comforting and life-affirming, as these conversations frequently are.
Then, at the beginning of December, I turned 40. We met up at our weekly CSA pickup, our children overjoyed as always to run around together at the farm. My friend had a gift she had been wanting to give me, and there in the muddy farm parking lot, at the back door of my minivan, I opened it. I caught a glimpse of the red doll hair and instantly burst into tears. To say that that one moment was one of profound, instantaneous healing would not be an understatement. She had given me a Felicity, complete with her original rosebud gown.
And of course, my daughter adores the doll. Both of my children do. They take turns carefully brushing her hair, carrying her around and showing her the house. She’s been the guest of honor at two tea parties already. They especially love the story as they understand it — their mama always wanted this doll when she was a little girl, and her best friend found it for her when she was a grown-up.
I was never taught how to be a mother. Growing up, I had no model for how a mother should be or should act. I only saw what I knew I never wanted to be. I had to teach myself, through books and instinct and the examples of my friends. I am a better mother because I allow my mom friends to mother me, to soothe my worries and reassure me I am doing a good job. To hold space for my tears.
And so this is one thing that I will hand down to my daughter: the immeasurable value of full, open-hearted friendship. She will have freedom, and friendship; the two primary values that are stressed, over and over, in the American Girl Felicity books. And now, I get to hand down a Felicity doll to her after all.