Paper Dolls

Saturday evening, I drove to Kelso with my mom and sister where my grandma and her husband live. At least it's been their permanent residence since my grandma has been hurt a few times and now has to live in a hospital bed. They had been spending most of their time in California, and we rarely saw or heard from them except at Christmas time. In fact, I can't honestly remember the last time we went to their house up north. They built it the year I was born, and since I was a kid, it has some of the deepest memories of my childhood. Going back there was a serious trip, and I'm still trying to figure out if the memories brought back joy.

Driving up the steep gravel hill, passing a new house that I'd never seen before on their property that used to be their Christmas tree farm and pulling into their driveway was the most surreal thing. To the right was a mobile home my parents used to live in and when I was a kid held my grandparents cookie jar "business", and even further right was the large "garage" that their motor home lived in. I don't even think they have that anymore. But walking in the front door, remembering all the years as a kid when the house was decorated to the "t" with lights and candles for holidays felt more like a funeral march. Nothing looked the same, everything was rearranged. The only thing left was the familiar smell which instantly hit me like a cold shower first thing in the morning. But even with that, my eyes and my nose could not compute where I was.

My grandma, having had a stroke and broken a few too many bones, did not actually recognize my sister and I. In fact, I'm still not sure she knows who came over the other night. Instead of a wall length back window with a gorgeous view of land and trees, bookshelves had been put up with pictures of my sister and me and our cousins from about 10-15 years ago. Books and old magazines cluttered other shelves, and a huge TV was set in front of the other large window that led to the porch. It was as if my grandma was shut out of the outdoors and not allowed to see light again.

The house itself has a basement, and that is where I know most of my childhood days at Grandma's house were spent. There is a distinct difference in smells from upstairs to downstairs, and walking down the stairs behind my curious sister flooded my head with more and more memories, parts of my past that were tucked so deep in the corners that it took me a few minutes to register what I was looking at and recall the actual events of years ago. Old school exercise bikes were in a far off room, two ancient TV's stood in a corner surrounded by faded couches and display shelves of my grandma's Shirley Temple doll collection, bookshelves held the Tammy dolls and Barbie accessories my grandma also collected, and dolls my sister and I would spend hours playing with. I had forgotten that there ever was a time I played with dolls. There's a spare bedroom downstairs, a room I know I slept in dozens of times, but can't quite conjur up the real memories. The shelves in there once held rows and rows of Barbie dolls, all in the original package, but now full of Reader's Digests and old picture books. Underneath a partially finished scrapbook, a gift box lay battered and worn with pieces of colored shapes falling out, and that's when the reality of the little girl inside me tore through the fogged up memories and the whole room started making sense.

Inside the box were paper dolls with different outfits, different hairstyles and all different sizes of dolls and characters. I can remember needing to create the perfect outfits for them, dividing up the dolls and their clothes in different piles (I should have figured out then I was a perfectionist) and trying desperately to keep the clothes on them even though they only held on by little tabs that folded over the doll's shoulder or underskirt. I took a few of the dolls out (my sister had gone upstairs already), laid them out over the bed with the ancient and thinned quilt, and started to divide up the clothes I knew went with the first doll.

I didn't get very far, because soon my girlish past caught up with me, and it brought back some of the not-so-pleasant parts that I'm sure I shut out on purpose. Memories of yelling and shielding my sister from the words, trying to keep her occupied so she wouldn't notice, the fights my cousins would get into, the hurt of knowing that because we weren't boys my grandma's husband never spent as much time with us, realizing that my grandma in all her kindness wasn't over the history with my grandpa, not being invited to my cousin's wedding, and all the other family drama that came along with being human and family. It was as if those thoughts and memories were locked inside that house and returning there meant having to be faced with all of it afresh. It made me wonder and start to really think about the girl who visited that house all the time as a small child and how she had changed over the many years she stayed away. It wasn't as if thinking of the past meant I was suddenly questioning life or even having to deal with it in a way that needed to heal deep wounds. I'm way beyond that and probably won't even think twice about it once this post is done. But I started to remember the reasons I grew up, the good and the bad, and how events in this house had helped make me grow out of being a little girl into a person who dealt with life on real terms. Not that this was the only place, but having spent so much time away, I had forgotten what pieces it held.

After putting the dolls back and turning off the lights one by one, I kinda said goodbye to the rooms, walked upstairs, said goodbye to my grandma and her husband, and walked out the door towards my car.

The whole evening was just a strange phenomenon of the past meeting the present that culminated in finding this random box of the forgotten. Who knew a box of paper dolls could do so much?

:)