Time Spent Alone

TIME SPENT ALONE
Recently, I was asked about my favourite childhood toy. My first impulse was to say, it wasn’t so much a toy but the anticipation of when mom brought home the latest Eaton’s catalogue from the Main Street Post Office.
I would lie on the floor and flip frantically through the glossy pages. With a shaky grip, I’d cut out the paper thin models donned with flowing virgin white bridal gowns and swanky brightly coloured bridesmaid dresses. Concentration would build as I swirled my moist tongue along dry lips.
With delicate fingers, I paraded the glamorous women atop the dresser, under the bed skirt and alongside the oil heater; usually to the tune of Dum, Dum, De, Dum. This usually lasted a few hours, or until the heads bent backwards and then the bridal party didn’t look as pretty.
But by saying that I was around for the Eaton’s catalogue, showed something about my age, so I picked the next memory that popped into my head. It was a doll, that my grown daughters recently pointed out - the head does not remotely match the body. I’m not sure how I missed that, since I had forty-plus years to give her a once over.
I’m also certain that I must have given her a name, but I can’t imagine what it would have been. Maybe Betty? Or was that the nurse doll?
Anyway, Miss ‘Odd Head’ certainly didn’t have the charm of an Eaton’s bride. Her puffed dimpled knees were moulded into a slightly bent position, she had a proportionally bloated tummy, fat arms and cupped fingers. In an upright position, her eyes opened with a sweep of dark lashes - her eyes closed, when she laid down. The doll had moulded plastic light-brown swirls for curls. And there was the slight split in her neck - possibly, a telltale sign of a foreign head being jack-hammered onto a larger frame. For a sense of realism, she had an anatomically correct hole bored into her bum.
I’m not sure of all of the details, but I do remember the day she died.
I cried openly, as tears rolled down my cheeks. Involuntary heartfelt hiccups escaped from my mouth. I believe the backyard theatrical performance came a few days after my Baba’s funeral.
I made a wobbly cross out of two sticks and a nail; which seemed to take the better part of the afternoon. It was a solemn day as I placed my doll’s lifeless body into the cool earth between red geraniums and pink petunias.
The next spring, my mom replanted her flower garden. I’m sure she had a creepy feeling inside her stomach as she pulled, first an arm, and then a head out of the makeshift burial plot.
Mom presented the doll to me later that night with nary the dirt of the last few months. I wrapped the white coloured plastic body and the brown rubber headed doll into a tea towel.
Jagged bits of plastic protruded where her fingers and toes used to be. The crack along her neck was somewhat larger. Her signature eyelashes were gone. The middle of her face was indented, faint evidence of a past nose. She only had one good eye. The other was somewhat wonky; like she might have experienced a stroke over the winter months. None-the-less, she was a miracle!
I still have her. In our basement. In a far corner. One cockeyed lash-less eye looking over the edge of a cardboard box. She is butt-naked, and the grandchildren never play with her.
Whatever her name is…