I like old things. More than that, I like to restore old things to their former beauty. I've always adored antiques of any kind, perhaps because I grew up with "old" furniture. I didn't realize at the time that most of what my mother had in the way of furniture was "antique." I simply thought we were too poor to afford new things. Lately, I've adopted an affinity for vintage dolls. My mother faithfully kept several of my childhood dolls and I inherited them when my mother downsized her home to move to Laurel Village, the assisted living facility. I enjoyed cleaning and restoring them to their former selves, which was quite a task, considering I had loved them well and sometimes a little too hard as a child. I played with them, slept with them and wept when I couldn't locate them at bedtime. Sometimes there would be as many as twelve dolls and a rather large teddy bear in the double bed that I shared with my older sister. Needless to say, she wasn't thrilled with all the company in the bed and sometimes enjoyed harassing me by throwing them out of the bed one at a time until I was worn out from retrieving them and we would both fall asleep with the intentions of out maneuvering each other.
There is something about the smell of a doll that brings back childhood memories. I always associate Christmas with the fresh vinyl smell of a doll brand new out of the box. It is a smell that cannot be duplicated and which many little girls over the decades have come to recognize, love, and associate with Santa Clause and Christmas morning. Christmas could not be Christmas without a bright, beautiful doll waiting under the tree for me, and there ALWAYS was. My mother, I'm sure, always derived as much joy from selecting dolls for Santa to give to us, as we did in the receiving of them. She took black and white pictures of my sister and I with our dolls standing in front of the Christmas tree, dressed in our Christmas finery, or sometimes early on Christmas morning, in our PJ's, with our bedraggled hair straggly and sleep clinging to our excited eyes. There are pictures of drink and wet dolls, big bald headed baby dolls, China head dolls, bride dolls, and several I have yet to identify.
I now keep an eye out for vintage dolls that I can restore. I find them at thrift shops, thrown helter skelter among the cast off toys of later generations. I find them at Good Will Stores, hiding among the later era, more commercial blank staring dolls. I find them most often on EBAY, from sellers auctioning off pieces of the past and making a buck off other people's childhood memories.
Perhaps I'm trying to recapture my childhood. Perhaps I want to revisit, just for a moment, a happier, less stressful time before adult responsibilities were a constant of every day life. Perhaps, I just want to catch a whiff of those vinyl Christmases when mama and daddy were still alive and excitement was the order of the day.
One thing I do know for certain, Daisy and Dolly would know exactly what to do with a vintage vinyl doll. They would sniff it, too.....just before they devoured it.
Vintage Ideal Doll
Ruthie, before and after
On the other hand, Dolly does have a tendency to think of herself as a real doll. I think she is, like her master, quickly becoming a "vintage doll." Years do roll by. Once a doll, always a doll is what I say.
