My First Female Role Model My best friend for many of my younger years was a girl named Jenny Harder. We were inseperable. At lunch times, we could be found in the sand box baking fake sand pies or climbing in the trees to look at robin's nests. We sat right beside each other in class and shared all our shiny school supplies: the metallic or smelly stickers, the neon highlighters, the zigzag scissors. We got in trouble together, skipping classes by hiding outside in the corn field adjacent to our school, looking up into the blue skies cloud searching.

What I like most about her was her family. In fact, her mother was one of the most influential people in my life. After school, i loved going to her house to see what new project her mother was working on. Mrs. Harder was one of the most creative, tender-hearted, welcoming, joyous and inspiring people that I knew. She was always planning different crafts for us to do everyday after school. One day, it might be painting a dollhouse, another baking plum tarts and another to decorating styrofoam balls with sequins for Christmas. Her house was littered with the family's art projects, hanging on the wall, the ceiling or jutting from the floor.

I found comfort in their house because over there, I found a female figure that was extremely "girly". My mom, on the other hand, was a very masculine figure in my family. She was the one who went out to work, while my dad stayed home and took care of us. So, I was never exposed to the baking, the sewing, the arts and crafts aspect of a "normal" mom. Coming from an asian background, the arts just did not exist.

So, it was at Jenny's house that I learned the great art of color-coordination, that a few sequins go a long way. How to dress dolls for different special occassions. What turns an otherwise normal apple pie into a spectacular melt in your mouth affair. Basically, all the how-tos to becoming a "fabulous queen".
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