Dolls
Finn likes to play with rocks. “Rock!” she shouts, and bangs on the front door so that I’ll let her out to sort gravel in the entryway. She collects sticks (“sdits”). She has a piece of radiant floor piping as a toy (this is, of course, an architect’s child).
She also has musical instruments and lots of books, and a stuffed gorilla. This is not a child lacking toys.
But the weirdest thing happened today at Auntie Linda’s. We got out the box of random toys from the shed so that Finn could play while the adults did adult things like eat and talk and exclaim “Finn is so cute!” and Finn found a bedraggled little doll in the box, and then a little plastic comb, and started to comb her hair. And then Linda went and got the big doll from her daughter Sophie’s room, and Finn said “Dooooooow…” and played with her and combed her hair.
“Finn needs a doll,” said Linda matter-of-factly.
“No she doesn’t; she plays with rocks,” I answered. I am the mommy-who-is-afraid-of-dolls. Which is totally stupid since I had dolls when I was little, including a whole set of mangled Barbies (if they were still around today, and not mangled, they’d be worth a fortune).
Linda suggested American Girl dolls, but for various reasons (including a trip to Chicago when I got caught in a surreal tide of girls clutching their lookalike dolls, all heading to the American Girl store to get matching haircuts and outfits), they scare the pants off me. Dolls, in my opinion, should not look like they’re going to come alive at night and go on a rampage through the house with a knife. (I think the root of the problem might be the Talking Tina espisode of the Twilight Zone).
So, I got home, got online (as usual) to try to find a doll that was neither scary nor $40. And I actually found dolls that even I would like to cuddle. The Groovy Girls are cute but not too cute. They’re not “come-alive-at-night” realistic. They’re soft and floppy and easy to toss around without poking an eye out. They’ve won awards for not promoting that young girls attempt 18” waists and Baywatch boobs (like Barbie). As the name implies, they’re groovy, with groovy clothes and groovy yarn hair. They have serene smiles.
I was fully prepared to order one online, which is my preferred shopping method, except that we really needed more bubbles, and I figured I’d take Finn down to Target and let David have an hour to himself.
In Target’s toy section I found a tiny area of Groovy Girls across from a huge pink wall of Barbies. There were only a few dolls – blond dolls and a vaguely hispanic Groovy Girl. Not a great selection, so I thought I’d go home and order online. Except Finn had other ideas. She pointed to
the groovy J-Lo impersonator, and when I handed her over, Finn clutched her and beamed, and said “doooooow!” with such enthusiasm that I knew we had a new member of the family.
I said to Finn, “What should we name her?” and the answer was “Booyette.” So we took Booyette home, Finn babbling about doll this and doll that in the backseat. And then she sat Booyette down with her stuffed gorilla, and pretended to comb their hair, and then pretended to feed them both with the shovel from her sand set.
I guess in addition to rocks and a gorilla, every girl needs a doll, and this is one even a mother can love.