September 18, 2016 - 12:49
Who wants to play house?
“I do”
That's how it usually went when I was a child playing house in the backyard under my 200 year old Spanish style home’s patio. My friends and I created a space large enough to bring pots, pans, a mat and any other random household object that had been thrown out or gifted to us. The scenarios were often similar daily life, but on special days we would brave the overgrown weeds fighting of dragons with sticks and making poisons out of flowers. The thing was, my sister, my best friend and I, we were warriors. Amazonian women with super strength and with a knack for vanquishing demons, rebuilding destroy villages (mud homes), and soldiers in a forgotten war. It was a game but also it wasn’t; it was empowerment. My childhood set a foundation for ardent feminist theory and a interal belief in power contained within ourselves. While this may just be a retrospective desire, I remember how confident we were fighting our own battles and making sure people knew that tigers, lion, and bears had nothing on us. Play was for me a liberation from the normal life into a fantasical world filled with passion and courage, some of the thing key qualities I still value to this day. We played house with a twist of the creative as we unappolgeticly ran through the streets with towel caps whooping and hollaring and thinking we were some sort of shero in our daring way.