I come from a social tradition, of sorts, that gets excited to give their daughters dolls they cannot play with; you know the ones that sit on the shelf. These dolls are usually accented by a few other non-kid friendly breakables. .…little breakable figurines. Some of mine were these porcelain doll figurines that I received each year from birth through my sweet sixteen. The baby one is a babe in a bed, the first birthday is a little pretty tot holding a number one; each year the girls got a little taller and doned a different color dress. The sweet sixteen year old holds her sixteen proudly. Back when I got her, I liked her because she reminded of the girl in The Sound of Music. Anyhow, these dolls took their place one by one on my do not touch shelf throughout my childhood. The same Christmas I received my sound of music chick, I also received a Waterford crystal angel figurine from my first boyfriend. (Because, nothing says love like a crystal angel from your boyfriend’s parents.) The next Christmas I received that angel's twin. (Same boyfriend)
The band of breakable girls and their late guardian angels lived on that same shelf until they moved into a box when my parents moved out of my childhood home. Then, my daughter had her first birthday and I had this awful dilemma on whether or not to have a do not touch shelf. I mean, my grandmother did give them to me, and they did stare at me for 18 years and admittedly, I kind of like them..And the angels are wonderfully reminiscent of my first love and all that I was and wasn't for years and years of teenage drama and sloooow maturation. On the one hand, it seemed sweet and sentimental to give these to my daughter; And on the other , I am rather anti toward all things that tell kids not to be kids.
Now that my daughter is 5, and she has discovered the do not touch items, she begs to play with them. I let her and reminded her to use her “soft touches, like we do with babies.” Needless to say, after a few of them lost their heads in a rather imaginative game of hide and go seek, I decided to send the figurines back to their box..But I couldn’t put the angels in a box.
These damn angels! (yikes, is that blasphemous?) What to do with them? (I still haven’t decided) So they sit in the far corner of my daughter’s closet, where their heads are safe but close enough where I am reminded, not of my first boyfriend and his parents so much, but that like everybody, I have a history and my story, like everyone’s, is sacred and important and in need of soft touches.
email me: grannysbosom@gmail.com
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