If you've read more than a paragraph in my diary, you probably know that I
- Remember details from my childhood as if I videotaped them then and play them back everyday, and
- Never throw anything out.
Hence, yesterday's treasure hunt. Or rather, unexpected treasure finding in the attic.
So, the little sewing machine. I know that I lobbied hard to get this thing. I waaaanted it. I don't know what on earth I thought I was going to do with it, but I had to have it. It wasn't a toy that was heavily advertised; I think I must have seen it at the Singer store, since we had recently bought a new machine "for my mother." I say this in quotations, because we did buy it for my mother, technically, but it was also meant as a lure to encourage my grandmother to come and live with us, a nice electric sewing machine. She was a tailor by trade before she was married, and made almost all of her own clothes almost all of her life. She taught me to handsew. I think the little Singer had a lot to do with her.
I got it for my 8th birthday; my birthday is January 12. Here's what I remember: I was using my sewing machine on a very snowy day; my mother was trying to help me make something for my giant baby doll (Louis) to wear. The day stands out in my memory because the weather was so bad that my father did not go to work, which is the only time I remember this happening in my childhood. There was a lot of snow on the ground -- I don't know if it was actually snowing -- but it was bitterly cold, and it's possible that his car wouldn't start. I remember that he was home, I was sewing, my mother was helping me, and we were watching TV. We were watching John Kennedy's inauguration. So it was January 20, 1961. As I recall.
As for my boys
I got the giant cheap baby doll in the summer of 59 or 60, on a family venture to J.J. Newberry's. The doll cost two or three dollars and change. Now this one, boy, I whined for. I probably cried for it. I wanted that doll more than anything, but my parents would not give in, no way, no how. I was a whiner, and they knew, I'm sure, that giving in was not the way to go.
But my grandma was with us that night, the same grandma who sewed, and lived in Massachusetts most of the time, the one we all wanted to come and live with us. She told my parents that she was buying me the doll and that was the end of it.
I named him Louis, because that had been my grandpa's name, and even then I knew that we named our babies after the dear departed, and I wanted Grandma to know that I loved her so much that I was naming my baby doll after her late husband. I was devoted to this doll. People gave me outgrown baby clothes for him. Someone gave me a baby-book, which I dutifully filled in, until I got to the pages of first word, first tooth, because really, what could I do with that? Louis is still with me because he is such a tangible link to Grandma, I think.
Little Matty Mattel, no story; I asked for him as a child normally would, and I got him for Chanukah. Tiny Chatty Brother, on the other hand ...
I was, quite possibly, twelve. I wanted this doll, too. I think my parents could not believe that I wanted a doll, of all things, for my birthday, although this was not unheard of at twelve back then. I think I got my Barbie when I was nine. Anyway, they made it clear that they were not getting me a doll. I guess that thought I wouldn't really play with it much. One evening, they took me to a toy store -- about a week before my birthday -- and said that daddy had a client with a little girl, a year younger than I was, and that he needed to pick up some kind of gift for her, a business thing. So would I pick something out for her?
Oh man, was I pissed off. Pick something out for another kid? How cruel is that? I went around and around the store, but I kept coming back to Tiny Chatty Brother. (He was the tiny chatty brother of Chatty Cathy, of course, who was The Big Doll at that time.) Finally, my parents asked me if I was sure, that this was the one toy that this other little girl would like. I insisted that it was, that I was sure. They agreed to get it, and then they said it was for me after all. They needed to be sure that it was what I really wanted, so they let me pick from an entire store full of toys. He was my birthday present.
And yes, I played with him. I don't know for how long, but I sure remember playing with him a lot, and he looks it. I named him Timmy because he had blond hair. I don't know what that means, but that's what I did.
Oh, I loved these guys. Now, that doesn't mean they weren't my first line of defense against evil hitchhikers and anything else that might have been hiding under my bed. Hey, maybe that's what I love them so much: they took care of me.
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I'm watching Full House
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
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