TRADITION – Part I

One Christmas I decided to buy myself an 8-inch Madame Alexander Wendy doll. I’d been eyeing a display of them for years at Mr. Mopps’ toy store. But they’re collectors’ dolls—for me, an extravagance, I’d told myself.

In A Patchwork Memoir, I wrote:

The day I bought my first Madame Alexander doll—I still haven’t managed to convince myself I deserve the second—I stared at her face off and on all afternoon, I found it so beautiful. When I took off her clothes, I discovered, to my delight, that she had dimpled elbows and knees. I actually felt a pang of tenderness for her, as if she were a real child.

Curious about her reaction, I decided to show her to Arielle. If she liked my new doll, I thought calculatingly, it would give me an excuse to buy the other one—with the altruistic intention of eventually giving her to Arielle…er…when she’s old enough to take good care of her. (Her wig wouldn’t last five minutes, the way Arielle swings her dolls around by the hair, I rationalized. As for her dress… Well, let me just say that the other day Arielle pulled something out of a plastic basket full of Barbie dolls and clothes and asked, “What’s this?” All I could see was that it was roundish, gray-brown, and fuzzy—I thought it must be a wad of some kind of wooly fabric. It wasn’t until I put on my glasses that I recognized what it was—a withered orange, blanketed entirely by thick gray mold.)

Another evening I fetched my old Muffy’s doll clothes from the basement—the ones I used to play with with Kathy—thinking they would fit my new doll, only to find that she was slightly too tall and wide in girth. OK, I’ll make her clothes myself, I resolved. But when I went to The Cotton Patch the next afternoon, I got more and more discouraged as I perused shelf after shelf of cotton prints, none of which I liked. After an hour of scrutiny, I left with only two swatches, one checked and one striped; all the floral prints were in grayed “country” colors that don’t particularly appeal to me. What’s wrong with me? I thought, appalled to realize my aesthetic was—apparently—so narrow.

But this morning at Beverly’s Fabrics in Alameda I got light-headed, I found so many flowered prints—bright and pastel—in the clear colors I love. I actually set foot in the store at 2:00 in the afternoon and didn’t stagger out until after 5:00, with a receipt a foot and a half long! This evening I’ve been trying the trims I picked out with the various fabrics and can already see in my mind’s eye half a dozen outfits and costumes I’m itching to make.

Why did I buy this particular doll? you may be wondering. Because I couldn’t resist the hat. Strangely, I later saw in a Madame Alexander catalogue that the hat in the photograph was on backwards. Whoever dressed her for the shoot hadn’t realized that the lace on these old-fashioned bonnets was meant to frame the face.

And, by the way, I did eventually buy the other doll I coveted—a blond frog princess.