A couple of days ago, I went and bought a small fake tree. Yes. I just did it. It was cheap, and I couldn't stand the thought of not having any tree at all. So up went our little table top tree...with a special something underneath. You see, at thanksgiving I grabbed a couple of boxes out of the storage unit that I thought were fabric, but were totally something else. It was some sewing supplies other "stuff" and at the bottom was my teddy bear. Tears kinda came up as I looked at my rag-0-muffin bear that has been through thick and thin with me, and then stuffed carelessly into the bottom of a box as if it were part of the packing material instead of something worth keeping.
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| just like this one...only green |
I started thinking about my toys. Everyone always asks me if I hate having a birthday so close to Christmas...the answer? not really. If my birthday is on a Saturday, then Christmas and New years are all on Saturday. That means 3 weeks of total fun. On the other hand, my mom was usually a little overwhelmed by the whole thing by the time my birthday rolled into town. So a lot of times it would be, "for your birthday, you can open one of your Christmas presents early"....Great, thanks. But really, it didn't matter that much. Christmas is a pretty magical time, and to be linked at all with it, as a kid, was good. I do have one memory, really very few stand out, but one does. It was one of those years of opening a present early...it was a Barbie doll case. It was bright green and round, and it had that wonderful smell. Anyone who has had Barbie dolls or new plastic toys knows that smell I'm talking about. It is such a good, I don't know...plastic smell! I can't describe it. It's like new car smell for kids! I was over the moon about my empty Barbie doll case. I crawled under the Christmas tree with my case...and opened the zipper and breathed in the beautiful new plastic smell. Then I looked up into the middle of the tree.
The colored lights spoke to me...I squinted my eyes so that all the colors melted together and glowed. I laid there for a couple of hours dreaming and squinting at the lights. That's it. The whole memory. Me under the tree squinting and smelling my plastic.
We did have a Barbie...honestly I don't know if it came before or after the case...it was awesome either way. She had big blue eyeshadow and I'm pretty sure was just like this one:
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| non-bendable...totally cool. |
Later we added a "Midge" doll and lots of other Barbies that were the new and improved bendable leg ones. Then came the "Little Kiddles" Now there was some serious fun. I collected tons of them and even threw in a martian thingy-doll just to spice the collection up. (Years later, when I was leaving home, I packed the whole Kit and Kaboodle up and gave it all to my nieces to continue on with.
So this week I have been staring up into my small little table top tree, squinting my eyes. Apologizing to my teddy bear for throwing him unceremoniously into a box of stuff....and dreaming of new toys.
Oh...and by the way...Christmas and New Years are on Saturday this year....I know that just because.
4 comments:
Oh that was a fun walk down memory lane - - I remember doing that same squinting thing - - and I had that EXACT Barbie and outfit ! wow the good times :) Happy Birthday again to YOU ! and many more fun fun memories to come
Happy Birthday! I knew your b- day was in Dec but didn't know the date. Isn't Maureen's in Dec too? Poor grandma! I only have one kiddo's birthday to worry about in Dec. A lot of my old toys are in a trunk of mine out in the shed. It's fun to get them out and remember childhood. Good times! I'm glad you got your tree.
Awww, thanks for the memories, Denise! I had BOTH of those Liddle Kiddles, still have the martian with her spaceship, in pristine condition, I might add. And my older sister had that blond Barbie with the fur trimmed outfit. Real rabbit fur if I remember right. And you are so right about the smell; even now when I smell a new toy I am catapulted back to 1966. The whole post just made me warm and fuzzy inside.
After reading this, I stopped when to my tree turned it on and looked at the artificial glory of it. The tree is my inheritance from my mom's mom--Grammy Erma. Grandpa Jack bought the tree right after WWII...they taught me how to set it up and so I set it up every year. Suddenly I was back in Ogden on Polk ave at my Grammy's house...she and I had a special love. Now that her memories are filling my heart my eyes are leaking too. Thank you for helping me to remember such a lovely moment. Love you!
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