Toyland, Joyland

We all have toys from childhood that we recall fondly. The reasons for that fondness are varied, and mine are probably not so different from yours. I had a lot of toys, from stuffed animals to dolls to sets with pieces that required assembly. That’s not counting crayons, coloring books, card games, puzzles. Board games, slinkies, play-do, and that flesh-colored plasticky stuff you could use to make impressions from newsprint and comics. However, I’m sure you’re not interested in my list, because it’s just a list and if you’re a certain age (like I am), our lists might be so similar as to be boring.

It’s impossible for me to choose just one toy from my list, so there are two I’d like to tell you about if you have time to listen. They’re both important, and both have remained in my life despite all the years since I first got them. They were just things to play with, but they stand out to me even now, more than the play kitchen, more than the Lincoln logs, more than the marbles. I still have them both, which in itself is a miracle, because after so many moves, anything that survives from a house that has faded from a life is worth thinking about. How do childhood objects avoid being thrown in the garbage, getting dirty and broken, losing their original importance? And how does one toy stand out above all the rest?

I’m telling you this story in order to find an answer. 

This is about a stuffed animal and a book. It doesn’t get more commonplace than that. However, when I see children’s books in a used bookstore or charity shop, and a child’s name is inscribed in them, I feel sad. Clearly the child no longer loves them. The same goes with old stuffed animals that nobody wants to buy in used condition because they look scruffy and unhygienic. When I was a little girl, neither scruffy nor unhygienic were words in my vocabulary and I was not thinking of how more than seventy years later they would be among my most beloved possessions. I am not a little girl; I’ve changed, but the stuffed animal and the book must have contained the seeds of this older, no old, me. Kind of like the seeds of plants thousands of years old that Russian scientists were able to germinate. Yes, I was like those seeds, hidden away in the joy of a little tyke, unsuspecting of what the future would bring.

When I was little, time was nonexistent and I had a surplus of it. Didn’t we all? Didn’t you? 

Let’s look at the book first. I think it was the first I ever owned, even if the concept of ownership wasn’t something I quite understood. It was a cloth book. The title was All by herself by Kay Clark. Copyright 1950. Look it up. You can find it on eBay for various prices. There’s an All by himself version for boys, but I didn’t know that. 

Most books made of paper are in danger if put into a child’s hands. Pages get crinkled, torn, and lost, and oftentimes little hands practice scribbling on them. My cloth book didn’t allow for that, but I remember perfectly that it was a book that begged me to put my hands all over it. You see, it was that book that taught me things like zipping a zipper and tying my shoelaces, things that were a child’s equivalent of ‘life skills’. In a sense, my hands became part of the book. I wasn’t warned not to bend or rip the pages - both of these things were impossible - and in fact was encouraged to do what the book said. The zipper, the laces, and the buttonholes with buttons were actually in the book, they weren’t just instructions on a page. The same for snapping a snap and folding a hankie to put in a pocket. I was supposed to do and undo the book, become its author. Note my use of italics here because it is now, decades later, that I realize it was a book like bread dough: you’re supposed to manipulate it, use parts of your body to carry out the activities. 

It was a growing-up book. I outgrew it quickly, but think about it: the memory of when I was still learning to make my fingers work properly is still with me. I can slip back inside that child and, through her, can enter the book. The pages were all promises of what a little girl can learn and be in the world. To do that meant not passively staring at worlds on screens but acting in order to reach a goal. Did I know that then? Of course not.

What the book also taught me is that books are important. They contain knowledge, useful things that we all need to know. As an old woman, I now think this book should be required reading for every toddler. If you have never seen my first book, you’re probably missing the point, and I feel bad about that. A book that is soft, with simple colors, a book you can hold in your fist, fold, drop, run your hand over. All of these things, you love this, and the book loves you back, saying, “I’m indestructible. I will never desert you.”

Book, you never did. When I moved, you always accompanied me and are here now in the last house I will ever own. My alter ego? Perhaps. Sadly, nobody else loves you like I do, so I’m writing down this story in case somebody someday reads it and understands how my obsession with books began, how books are my solace and distraction, my friends (I don’t have any of the human kind), my everything. My first and last love. If you look at me, you will not see All by herself, but it is inside me, just as my hands were inside it and I was becoming a person who knew how to do things. So basically, our boundaries are pretty blurred and if you were to touch me, you would feel the texture of sturdy cloth, laces in a neat bow, a zipper zipped up.

Not to mention that after I retired and took lots of book arts courses to learn how to make artist’s books, you were my inspiration, my reason for breaking through the barrier created by all the fancy hard-cover books I’ve known and loved, breaking through to the origin of a life-changing experience. One more thing: I have not exaggerated the points in this story. One Saturday in the flea market in town, I went by a booth and there was All by herself. Two copies, a bit stained, but still in perfect working order. Over seventy years old. I bought both, but before that I cried, drowning, not in the nearby Androscoggin River, but in memories the color of sun, hardwood floors, and a soft lap. The new copies weren’t expensive, but they might have been if the seller only had known.

The other part of my story is the stuffed animal. I’ll try to keep it short. The animal was a dog, a cocker spaniel. We had just gotten a spaniel puppy, a beautiful auburn dog, and she had a name. My stuffed spaniel never had a name. Every other stuffed animal I had was quickly baptized, but not him. (It was a he, don’t ask me how I knew.) This one was a similar color, probably soft, with red satin ears (on the inside). My mother brought him to me from New York City where she’d had a big meeting. She never left me for a week, but this time she had. Spaniel was proof that she had made it back safely from a long, long trip. 

After his arrival, Spaniel slept with me every night. Every single night. Sometimes he was in my arms, other times on my pillow by my head. Faithful as could be. When I grew up and moved out, my mother kept him safe, knowing his importance. She loved him because I did, and anything her five year old daughter loved, she felt the same about it. I don’t know if she slept with him in her arms or on her pillow, but she might have. He was a repository of all her memories of a little girl who had also hugged him.

I should point out that Spaniel was rather flat when I got him, so he wasn’t the typical inflated round things they make now. His embroidered eyes had lashes and he always seemed to be asleep, but that wasn’t it, his eyes were closed as he listened to me tell him how my day had been and how everything was right with the world. His nose was too tiny to matter, but he had a little red tongue, also sewn on. His face spoke contentment. He helped me go to sleep like a good little girl.

Spaniel has never been washed, but he is not grimy or smelly and he certainly doesn’t have fleas. He’s not moth-eaten, either. He’s about a foot long and still fits in my arms although I usually keep him at the head of my bed, on top of the books there. (Books, yes.) Nowadays almost nothing is right with the world, inside or outside of me. And I confess that certain memories are hard to handle now. Spaniel, you helped me recover from chickenpox, watched bubble lights in the window at Christmas, heard other stories only you and I know and will never share. You were the best friend of an only child, you never left even when I did. You waited and waited. Finally, I returned.

Now you are here with me in this house that is not a home, where I live sometimes with other people whom I do not love and who do not love me, but fine. Maybe what you are is not a secret, but I can’t depend on anybody else being too concerned about how important you were and are. To hold on to you is to hold on to life, that other one with chickenpox and lights in the window illuminating the falling snow. It’s the only life that matters now, and if it weren’t for you, well…

So here I sit, telling or screaming this story at the top of my lungs, wondering if I should give up and just go get drunk or stoned and not interested in either of those things. However, because there still is a future and that future includes my no longer sitting here with childish thoughts - people always say senility makes people childish - I need to decide what to do with you. 

If I end up in a coffin, which isn’t likely, do I want to put it in my will that you will be with me? You, and All by herself, so I’ll have something to do with my hands, okay? It scares me to think of ‘all by herself’ if that’s referring to being alone in a box. If I get burned and my ashes put in an urn, do I want to subject Spaniel and book to the same torture? Would the funeral director allow anything else in the fire pit with me?

They say you can’t take it with you, but maybe the correct question is, should you take it with you? Should I take them with me?

Especially after keeping them alive for all these years.