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My Barbie Dolls
By Rebecca | September 22, 2008
I have always loved Barbie Dolls. It was a passion that did not subside as I got older. If anything, it intensified. By my Senior year in high school, I had learned to explain that I “collected” Barbies. I neglected to mention that I regularly played with my collection.
Once in college, I had money of my own to spend on a more regular basis. My collection grew but by now friends believed that it needed a little dignity. I began receiving collectible dolls as gifts. While I loved the look and design of these dolls, my thrifty soul was shocked at the amount of money spent on such a frivolity. Consequently, I did not open a single box. For years, I lugged them around with me, displaying them unopened on shelves or tables in my college apartments.
After I married, my dolls were packed away. The everyday collection was sent to my younger sisters to play with. At last, I had no more time or room to play with them. My collectible dolls were placed into a large box and, eventually, stored in a closet at my mother-in-law’s house. There they sat. Forgotten and unappreciated.
Until my children visited their grandmother this summer. While helping grandma clean house, my four year old daughter found the box. I imagine she must have felt like a coal miner who strikes a vein of rich, pure gold. She immediately began begging her grandmother to let her play with the dolls. My mother-in-law informed her that the dolls did not belong to her and that she could not open them.
Then, of course, my little girl had to know who owned the dolls. Upon finding out that the dolls belonged to me, she decided that it was time that I took my dolls home. Grandma couldn’t tell her no, and besides, she was ready to have her closet back.
So the box came home with us. We found some knick knack shelves in the garage that had been given to us some time ago and painted them to match my daughter’s day bed. Then we took down the posters of the alphabet and moved her picture of Jesus to a different wall. We hung the shelves on the walls at the foot of her bed.
Then we had a Barbie opening party. One by one we took the dolls from their boxes. Some of the boxes were smashed beyond recognition. My daughter collected the brushes and made sure each doll was wearing her shoes. I would place the dolls on stands. When we got five or six of them on stands, we would pick them up, one by one, and carefully carry them into the bedroom and arrange them on the shelves.
The next morning I walked into my daughter’s room to help her get dressed. I got her clothes out of the dresser and turned toward the wall of Barbies. I stopped, entranced by the elaborately dressed dolls with their fancy hair-dos. Silently my little girl came up behind me and slipped her hand into mine. Then she asked, knowingly, “Mommy, do you need to look at your dollies?” I smiled and said that I did. Together we shared a moment of enjoying my dolls together.
Topics: Blessings, Family, Traditions |
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:24 am
Barbie is still popular after all these years. Will barbie ever fade away? I doubt it.