Trent Dalton: Let it go, dear girls, then go for it

Let your future be only and exactly everything you have ever wanted it to be.

Trent Dalton. Picture: Adam Yip

My daughters are aged 12 and 10, too young to know about glass ceilings, too old to care for handsome princes holding glass slippers.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I was asking that curly one not long after they could eat solids — the key skill requirement for a career in Australian politics.

“I want to be a ballerina,” one said early on. We had a friend, a mum to two gifted ballerinas. “Do not encourage a career in ballet,” she said. “She’ll break her ankle and end up working in a strip joint.”

Then they wanted to be explorers like Dora and then they wanted to be paramedics like Barbie. I’ve got no beef with Barbie — kind, sick wheels, seriously multiskilled — but I still remember the day my daughter said her new heroes were Elsa from Frozen — bad-arse independent ice maker — and Kate Miller-Heidke, a real-life, flesh-and-blood role model from our home city who could smash a six inch-thick glass ceiling with a vocal range as high as the Story Bridge.

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“Let it go!” Elsa hollered in those heady days and I was so proud and so bloody terrified when my girl would shout that gospel to the rooftops — right through her own plasterboard ceilings — because every dad knows what a seven-year-old girl really means when she sings that song.

“I’m letting go, Dad! I’m letting go of fear. I’m letting go of expectations and boundaries and, sorry ol’ mate, but one day I’m letting go of your hand.”

I have this vivid memory of watching a documentary with my daughters about Jessica Watson and that crazy-brave and beautiful trip she made around the world at the age of 16. My girls loved her little pink boat and then they loved the big thoughts she was letting go from her mouth about all those naysayers, all those wowsers — all them worried dads — who said she couldn’t do it. “I wanted to challenge myself and achieve something to be proud of,” she said. “And yes, I wanted to inspire people. I hated being judged by my appearance and other people’s expectations of what a little girl was capable of.”

It’s these sort of moments where the girls know I’m gonna come over all cheeseball-dad and rub their shoulders and say, “Look at her! LOOK. AT. HERRRR! See! Seeeee!”

But of course they see. They always see. They saw Julia Gillard. They saw Julie Bishop and Michelle Obama and Princess Leia. They’ve been reading those glorious books called Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls and every night they’ve been seeing Marie Curie and Malala.

They see all our friends who are plugging away with their own small businesses or working their backsides off running offices and all the mums spinning dinner plates and work diaries and laptops simultaneously on the tips of their fingers and toes. Their greatest role models right now are Taylor Swift, J.K. Rowling and their mum, and only one of those women knows where we keep the Band-Aids.

‘Let your future be only and exactly everything you have ever wanted it to be’

My youngest daughter has her future set in stone, aged 10. The world’s first actress-astronaut-hip-hop-dancer-cafe-owner-teacher-librarian-biologist-mother-of-six-wand-manufacturer. Two weeks ago a good mate added another job to her list. This mate happens to be a judge’s clerk who happened to sneak my girls into an empty and important courtroom and let them dress in long black judges’ robes so they looked like some wondrous cross between Susan Kiefel and Darth Vader. He let my girls sit in the judge’s chair and announce all kinds of things like, “Has the jury reached a verdict”, and, “Luke, I am your father”. This mate then spoke of the history of women who had sat in that judge’s chair and the things they broke through to get there and later in the kitchen back home my girl said to me, softly: “I want to be a judge, too.” And I swear I got all wet-eyed like a guilty man bound for an electrified chair. Hope and pride in the first degree.

“Go for it,” I say. And if you really want to be a ballerina then go for that too. And if you break your ankle just go right ahead and buy yourself a chain of strip joints and fill them all with brilliant ballerinas with gammy ankles. Your options are so very endless and our expectations are so very few. Your dad has but two: be kind and stay off drugs. The rest is blue sky that belongs to you. Let your future be only and exactly everything you have ever wanted it to be. Let it be enriching. Let it be joyous and tough and rewarding and busy and brilliant. Let it dance. Let it sing. Let it soar. Let it go.