Frankie's 3

Practically since the moment you were born I have asked your mother, "What's she going to be like?" This past year we started to find out.

When I ride the train into Manhattan on most mornings, there are a lot of young women on my train: Creatives with their boots and canvas totes, corporate climbers with tight ponytails and sleek suits, service workers and nurses already looking world-weary. I can't help but wonder if one day you'll be like any of them.

I look for clues in your play. How you like to line things up in neat rows, that you're fascinated with how things are put together, how much you like using your hands to make a mark with a brush or pen. I wonder what it means that you always notice when the moon is out before the sun has set.

I know that inasmuch as there is a Frankie forming, there is also a Frankie already in there being slowly discovered. I try to remember that my job as a parent is to support the discovering as much as it is to guide the forming. I am now old enough to know people for whom too much forming dimmed their souls. Done properly, the job of discovering who you are takes a lifetime and I will only be there to support you for a portion of it. The best I can do is encourage you now when you seem to be most in touch with your true nature.

Right now, you love wearing costume dresses. Putting them on is often your first thought in the morning. I don't know if these dresses give you comfort or if becoming Rapunzel or Belle gives you more confidence. Jerry Seinfeld once said,

"Confidence is a fascinating commodity. There’s no upper limit on the usefulness of it, as long as it doesn’t bleed into arrogance. You need as much of it as you can get."

Confidence can be faked, but only to other people. You can never fool yourself. D.H. Lawrence wrote, "You've got to know yourself so you can at last be yourself."

I can't form you into one of the girls on the train, I can only hope that one day, when you take off the dresses and step on, it's as the only Frankie that could have possibly been.

Love,

Dad