A Doll Story

Me and Baby Checkers

Last night on the drive upstate to Fran’s place in Rockland County, the names of all my old dolls started to stream back into my memory. They are long gone; mostly because of the house fire we had in the Bronx years ago. I could have kept them but there were a lot and I was just so messed up over the whole disaster that it felt foolish at the time to try and keep them. My Barbies, baby dolls, Cabbage Patches all went in the dumpster. I can’t even imagine what I would have done with them all if I’d kept them. I think it was for the best. But I guess what’s gotten me started thinking about it is my present obsession with Blythe dolls and just dolls in general, what they mean and how they influence our development racially, emotionally, socially.

Thinking about my dolls’ names made me realize that my mom may have been a bit of a doll collector in her mature years as well. One of my first dolls that I received from her for Christmas was a black doll in a wedding dress. Her name was Isis. That was what we called her although I realize now that I didn’t give her this name. That was all my mom and the influence of her interest and studies of ancient Egyptian history.
There was another black baby doll I had that I loved. She was all plastic and had a speaker in her chest so I imagined she actually spoke at some point but I certainly don’t remember when. I called her Checkers. No mystery there. I just liked the word Checkers.

Denanda was another black baby doll I loved, with a soft stuffed body with plastic arms, legs and head and eyes that closed when she was prone. Mom and I named her mutually, after a Buddhist chant my mother taught me as a girl. We used to sing it together like a song. Ananda means bliss. The chant is a sort of Buddhist meditation about God and following your own conscience.

Om tat sat sit chit ananda

It means absolute Consciousness, absolute Existence, absolute Bliss.

Mom also made me a doll out of brown velvet with no facial features. My brother and I called her Brown Baby. She had real hair on her head, though I forget whose hair it was. We cast her as the hero of countless doll adventures.

When I think about this stuff now, I realize that much of my self-esteem, self-image and curiosity about other cultures was grounded unconsciously by the way in which my mom integrated her own multicultural interests in the naming of my dolls. Somehow, the diversity in their names (They had traditional Western names like Mandy, Judy and Eve as well) informed my easy acceptance of differences on a wider scale. Somehow, even as a girl I knew that the way people played with dolls was very telling about deeper aspects of their personalities, home life, learned preference and future development. So much can be learned about people from the way in which they play, not just dolls but toys in general. As we get older, toys may change take on various new definitions, but for me, a lack of play is a lack of life. I had so much fun playing as a girl and I have never really stopped.