Dolls

I loved dolls when I was young. Before I had a doll when I was about 2 1/2 my mother took me down to the swings at Reid Park where there happened to be another little girl who did have a doll. The girl's mother said we should share the doll and so I was allowed to have a hold. When it was time to give the doll back I didn't want to, screamed blue murder and bit the little girl, much to my mother' great embarrassment. I can't remember this incident but my mother told me years later and still shuddered with horror when she recalled the bite marks on the arm of the then also screaming other little girl.

My first doll Hansel I received when I was three ( I think). I played with him a lot and think that he was 'the baby' when John and I played mothers and fathers.

John's sisters Pam and Joan had the most beautiful dolls with china faces and real hair. They wore exquisite dresses and I would have loved to play with them but they were 'looking at, not touching' dolls which sat up on a shelf.

My father had two Swiss friends who were on the same boat as him when he came to Australia. These two young men came to our place for meals regularly and when I was about 4 they gave me a doll for Christmas. Onkel Herbert and Onkel Emil couldn't have given me a more wonderful present.

I had opened the gifts under the Christmas tree and was sitting with my mother on the couch when it was announced that there was another present. The Onkels hadn't wrapped the doll but she was in a box, the front covered with clear cellophane. She was wearing a bright shiny yellow dress with a wide skirt edged with green rick rack braid and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I immediately named her Susan because I thought that was the most beautiful of names.

That night Susan sat on my bedhead and I kept waking up to touch her just to make sure she was still there. On closer inspection the next day I discovered that her bodice and undies were glued on and part of the attraction of having a doll was the dressing and undressing, so my father gently peeled the offending pieces of clothing off and my mother hurriedly sewed a few clothes for her.

I loved Susan very much but occasionally she would have an accident such as having the various internal workings break so that her arm or leg would fall off. Also I think one of her eyes got pushed right inside her head. When this happened she would go to the dolls' hospital to be repaired and I would have to play with Hansel.

Eventually someone dropped Susan and her entire head split open. I guess I could have got another head but she had already been repaired several times so got thrown out. I cried and cried. It must have been close to my birthday because I received another doll. Susan had had reddish hair and so I'm sure that's why Mutti chose a doll with short curly red hair but unfortunately the new Susan had the most distressingly bright pink skin so I didn't like her although I was polite and played with her briefly.

Two years in a row relatives in Germany sent dolls. They were baby dolls, both boys obviously, because they were dressed in blue. I named the first one Michael. He had brown eyes. The second doll was blue eyed and I named him Karl Heinz after a friend of ours'. They were real baby dolls with bandy legs and hands that had the thumb sticking up so you could turn their heads and put the arms up so they could suck their thumbs. Their thickly lashed eyes closed and both would say "Mama" when you tipped them over although I believe Michael became mute after a while. I played with them a lot.

Barbie dolls came out in 1959 when I was 8 and were an immediate hit. Some lucky girls at school had Barbies and I envied them and was grateful to be allowed to hold the treasures for a while. These dolls always had large wardrobes of clothes and we would spend an entire lunchtime changing the outfits and making up games. I begged my parents for a Barbie but my mother declared that Barbies were ridiculous, not real dolls and that you couldn't play with them properly, not like a baby doll.

Someone gave me a black doll wearing a hula skirt and lots of beads at some time. She was called Sabrina. I didn't play with her very much and can't remember what happened to her.

I was going to German Saturday school in the city regularly by this time and for a while our classes were held in the YWCA building in College St Sydney. One Saturday there was a fete going on in the hall downstairs from our classrooms and of course during our morning tea break we went down to investigate. As usual there was a raffle and the prize was a doll. She was a bit like a tallish Barbie with long legs and boobs but with a girlish face with long lashed eyes that opened and closed. She was dressed as a harem lady with a sparkly bikini type outfit with pale blue organza leggings and veil. I stood and stared and hoped and prayed that she could be mine. The lady selling the raffle tickets saw the longing in my eyes and saying the tickets were free, gave me one. That was so kind, especially so because I won her! I came home from school one day and there she was. They had rung my mother who had immediately got on the ferry and then the bus to pick her up for me. I felt like I was the luckiest person alive.

Because she looked exotic I named my new doll Isabella after consultation with the neighbours at the flats, because I thought that a pretty fancy name. I made her all sorts of clothes as did Mrs Hummerston (our neighbour). At the German Bazaar that year I was wishfully looking at dolls' clothes and the lady at the stall generously gave me a beautiful beige satin outfit which fitted Isabella perfectly, so I was doubly lucky.

As time went on I became less interested in dolls and spent a lot of time reading so the dolls sat in the cupboard languishing. Young friends played with them when they visited and when someone pushed Isabella's eyes in she somehow disappeared and I didn't really miss her.

As I was an only child and spent a lot of time alone, my dolls were real company. They all had their own personalities and I had lots of conversations with them. We had tea parties and I baked them biscuits and made them clothes, took them for walks and loved them dearly. They were an important part of my life.

To my surprise I found a cheap little doll which we had bought at Woolworths and which I had dressed as Elizabeth 1st for a project in sixth grade, in a cupboard I was cleaning out not all that long ago. I was surprised at my sewing and decorating skills, if I do say so myself.

Hansel, my first doll and Michael and Karl Heinz who are 'Turtle' brand dolls and probably quite valuable, still live in a cupboard at home (somewhere) wearing the original outfits they came with. The poor things have been unloved for a long time.