Nina In New York: Welcome To The Doll Box

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

I was always one of those girls who knew she wanted to be a mother to at least one daughter. Since a very young age, I've been envisioning my future self showing my girl the ropes as they were shown to me. In most cases, my advance planning hasn't exactly paid off. I've kept a running tally of girls' names that I love for about as long as I can remember, although I don't feel nearly the same feelings for "Jordan" and "Brooke" as I did back in 1992. I've been waiting to take my kid to the Plaza for high tea since I was seven, and we're still not quite there. I cannot believe I didn't have the foresight to videotape every season of Punky Brewster and then transfer those tapes to DVD, but who knew the greatest show in American history wouldn't stay on the air for thirty-plus seasons?

Thankfully, I (and my mom) did a few things right. For one, we saved all of my favorite books from childhood, many of which my 2-year-old is already wholly in love. She also now sleeps with my own, well-loved teddy bear. At my mother's house, she lays her head upon Little Mermaid and Ninja Turtle sheets. And, the pièce de resistance: I saved all my very best dolls. While I wish we could have saved it all and spared ourselves the cost of new play kitchens and easels and drawing desks, we tried to go for quality over quantity. For years, I've dreamt of that box in the attic filled with plastic and porcelain limbs and rosy, painted cheeks and perfectly pursed lips. I thought of the rich fabrics of their clothes, their perfect banana curls or luxuriant blonde locks, their uniformly bright eyes which seemed to shout, "play with me!"

If this is all sounding a little bit creepy, that's just because it totally is. My mother and I recently unsealed The Box, giddy with the anticipation of gifting my daughter with its special contents. We unfolded the cardboard flaps to find . . . well, a mess, mostly. The porcelain dolls were somewhat grayer than I'd recalled, and a whole lot weirder. Why had I loved them so much? Their expressions looked hollow, their features suddenly plain. Had I really loved fur hats and petticoats so much? I pulled each one out, wanting to feel a spark of what I once did, but I just couldn't imagine what I'd seen in them, let alone what a kid born in 2013 would see. To be totally honest, they were starting to scare the crap out of me. How did I sleep with these next to my bed for so many years? They were certainly not coming anywhere near my daughter. Into the donate pile they went, one after the next, destined for some lucky child with a thing for old, possibly haunted dolls with a new vendetta.

My most beloved, realistic doll, Elizabeth, came next. Her place in my life had reached near mythological status, with so many decades of replaying fond memories in my head. She was so pretty, so lifelike, such a perfect friend for a little one. She was . . . hideously deformed. The weight of the porcelain girls had, over time, changed the shape of her head irreversibly, and as I pulled her out of the box I saw with horror that she looked more like The Elephant Man than a girl's best friend. Oh, Elizabeth. I'm so, so sorry. Please, don't hate me. Stop looking at me like that. Seriously, you're freaking me out. I just . . . oh, god. It's too late. Donate. Donate. Donate.

She was followed by a baby doll who was so old and poorly aged that her plastic had been leeched of all humanoid coloring and had, instead, turned a ghastly shade of white. After I said a quick prayer over her, I pulled out a lone Barbie doll with wild hair, wearing a disheveled, multi-layer wedding gown. She was like a slutty, large-breasted Miss Havisham, and I decided to keep her. Also rescued were a couple of troll dolls, whose presence in the box was inexplicable alongside the others, but nonetheless a breath of fresh air. They were ugly to begin with, so time turned out to have been in their favor.

My American Girl Doll, a now-discontinued colonial schoolgirl named Felicity, was the sole, high-value item that withstood the decades of storage living. This was because we'd had the good instincts to package her in what was essentially a cardboard coffin within the larger box. She needs a sponge bath and a trip to the doll salon (this really exists), but she'll do just fine. She is, essentially, the lone survivor of an unfortunate tribe who entered the attic as vibrant, beautiful, hardworking toys . . . and exited in body bags. Or, you know, a garbage bag, if you want to tone down the drama a tad.

File this under: parental disappointment #43. Expectations meet reality, and they never quite seem to align. It's not exactly a tragedy. My daughter will get her own, brand new dolls, and she will love and cherish them and hopefully want to save them for her own future offspring. And in thirty or so years, we'll unpack them from their little, individual coffins, and she'll thank me profusely for turning my attic into a temporary doll mortuary. And I'll be happy to do it.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!