Cowboys and farmers and growing things

A friend of ours, Marquis, just came over to have dinner and hang out while his adult went off with Rocki to a meeting. Marquis came in full cowboy regalia and Luca met him at the door, also with a red cowboy hat perched on her head.

What is it about being a cowboy/girl, a farmer, a rancher? Luca is clear that she wants to grow things, take care of animals and have a big old horse perched between her legs. Marquis has told me he wants to be a cowboy or a rancher, he doesn't want to ride in the rodeo but he wants to ride ride ride over huge great fields and make the cattle run the right way.

Today on the way home from school, Luca was frustrated about forgetting to bring a drawing home. In her frustration, she said that she was planning on throwing a tantrum. When I told her that wasn't a good idea, she said that the problem was, she wanted to hit something or someone. "I don't want to hit a pillow, mama, I want to hit something that would break." she explained.

While we talked about why breaking car windows was not a good idea, she shifted her thinking and said she just wanted to get out of the car and run run run run without telling any grownups where she was going or without having to come home at any special time. "I just want to have all of the space for myself, mama, I don't want anyone else to live in Minneapolis, or to be on the street or to be in the houses. I want it just for us."

Ok, so this didn't seem like a conversation about privilege (all mine mine mine said the white middle class girl) so much as a conversation about longing and expansion and the individual. Yeah, the very things that leads and has led to colonialism but probably started just like this, as a feeling. Grown ups always telling you what to do, wanting to just kick and push and own all of the space. And so, god damned it, I'll just take all of this and make it mine and keep on making more and more of it mine. Without end.

I thought about this while Marquis and Luca were giggling madly about riding horses for days and then going to their farm and picking their food and milking their cows and then getting back on their horses. A dream of power. A dream of control. Of life without all of those annoying boundaries and limits. The two of them in their cowboy hats, Luca maybe still wanting to break things but instead, breaking open space into something that is limitless in imagination.