She loved Barney. It got to the point where she couldn’t go anywhere without him. She had the Barney doll, the Barney hat, the Barney tapes, and Barney pajamas. If we left for the babysitter’s but forgot Barney, we simply turned around and went back to get him. No questions asked and no need for any audible sighing on my part. Barney was her best bud. Every weekday afternoon, at 2:00, we watched Barney on TV, singing along to the I Love You song. She’s 27 now, but Barney is still somewhere in residence. I could give away most other childhood effects, but not Barney.
For me, it was Monkey. He is a baby-sized brown and yellow stuffed chimp in elastic suspenders and yellowed tennis shoes, with gnarled plastic hands and a dish face wearing a perpetual grin. He was my favorite. He held a pliable banana molded to one hand that would just fit in his grinning mouth so that I could actually feed him the banana. I loved Monkey.
I also loved my little pink cardboard stove. My older brother and I had no other siblings, so we had to settle on each other for entertainment occasionally. While I busied myself with cooking on the cardboard stove, frying up those plastic eggs, he busied himself beating up Monkey. He was a fan of Saturday afternoon wrestling and took out that play acting on poor Monkey. In those pre-video-game years, imagination was for real—not confined to a fast-action monitor. Although his stuffing is now permanently rearranged somewhat, with one arm in a sad dangle from which he will never recover, Monkey is still with me, still grinning, and in a much better place.
I know stuffed animals and dolls don’t have emotions and can’t hear you, but I’ve watched Toy Story a few times too many and find it just about impossible to give any of ours away. It doesn’t help that my oldest daughter is just as sentimental as I am, and very attached to remnants of her childhood. If an item doesn’t have a face, she’s OK with rehoming it, but heaven forbid that an inanimate object with two sad eyes is carried out. I probably shouldn’t have read the Velveteen Rabbit to her as many times as I did years ago.
“It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
I just heard a heartstring break.
I’m currently in the midst of a decluttering frenzy and really don’t need to revisit that Velveteen Rabbit quote. And yet, there it is, playing in my mind like a record that’s stuck in a loop as I consider the 40-doll Barbie collection that has lived with us for more than a few years. “Then you become Real. Then you become Real…”
From Beanie Babies to Barbies to Bitty Babies, we have them all and they’re apparently going nowhere. As I prepare for house painters and a bit of remodeling, I stare down the stackable totes still stored in those closets, brimming with half-naked Barbies and plastic animals that have definitely seen better days, I know they really need to go. And I also know that they’re most likely not going anywhere. Legos might take a hike, but Woody and Buzz and the multiple Barbie families are permanent residents. I might rearrange them a bit, and they may even end up packed away in cardboard boxes to be rediscovered, or maybe even discarded, by a new generation, but if an item has a face or a name, it will not be shipped off to the Island of Misfit Toys. At least, not if our oldest daughter is within knowing distance.
I think the deal is that over the decades, we’ve just collected more stuff, which makes it a whole lot more difficult to deal with. I have the only two dolls my mom probably ever owned, and they really don’t take up much space. I owned three Barbies and one Francie, having never collected a single Ken or GI Joe or Skipper. And their entire wardrobe fits in one carboard Corning Percolator box. But it’s another story when you consider the nameless dozens of Barbies, the Fisher Price double-decker dollhouse and residents, Barbie Townhouse, Barbie jet, and Barbie VWs that inhabit the attic and spill over into bedroom closets. An entire top closet shelf is a stuffed animal nightmare, exploding with tangled limbs and yarn hair. Chucky is probably even up there somewhere.
And yet, here I am, alone in the empty nest, attempting to sort out the well-loved items ahead of the painters who oddly enough demand a clean palette on which to work. And I’m well aware that even if I give away half of what I see, those items won’t be missed. And yet…
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But those things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
At least Legos don’t look you in the eye as you’re closing the lid.
