Someone To Get me Home

As a child of grade school age, I never cared for playing dolls.  I much preferred playing ball, “war,”—building forts—even jumping rope and playing hopscotch to setting out all the tiny clothes and beds and endless frills that went with Barbie and her friends.  Maybe it was just too sedentary, or maybe I just liked playing games in which I was the character, rather than the doll.

And, for whatever reason, it seems that the little girls I passed over as friends then, stationed together in their backyards setting endless rules for fashion shows and tea parties, appear later in my life as women who live in incredible dollhouse homes that give you the feeling when you walk in, that you've just started down the “girls” aisle at the local Toy Mart.  Everything is soft and smooth and pastel, like boiled icing on an elaborate Easter cake—every room done up in surreal shades of pale green, blue, pink and lavender—with calico and lace, tiny hearts and teddy bears and bows.

My home, just as predictably, turned out looking more like a hunting lodge, some old cantankerous uncle’s cabin—or trailer.  Perhaps that’s all anyone’s home really is—a nest of trinkets that represent security, and warmth, and well-being to the ones that live there.  Is it my fault that the most secure feelings I have are attached to nights long ago when I fell asleep in the back seat of the family station wagon—lulled by the motion of a lumbering Oldsmobile and the knowledge that my father was stationed solidly at the wheel?  Is it my fault that I find solace in old Formica dining tables with vinyl-backed chairs, chipped coffee cups and TV trays with scenes of hunting dogs on them?

I was raised by a mother who did not have a kitchen motif.  No chosen animal she collected, no fruit or vegetable, no canisters and curtains to match.  It never bothered me.  But by the time I was in junior high, and had begun to shed my tomboy ways, comb my hair and go to slumber parties, it suddenly did begin to matter that we didn't have any of those magnets stuck to our refrigerator, or those fancy hand towels made to look like little aprons.

Barbara Evans was “Everything” in 8th grade.  Mostly she was captain of the JV cheerleading squad.  She wasn't all that pretty, but she had hair that was that light brown color that you could turn into a beautiful blonde with a little peroxide and a rich father.  She had as many outfits with accessories to match as those childhood Barbies did, and in those days there were times when I wanted more than anything to belong to her little club.

Was that what I wanted now, the Barbie dream home?  Had I always secretly admired the polish and the perfume, the order and repetition of those cookie cutter lives?  Did I hope to meet Ken down the line?

“We’re all entitled to our fantasies, “ I told my friend Danny on the phone one night.
“Fantasies?” he echoed back, “And what was I?  Was I on a white horse?”
“No.”
“Well, what then? The coachman?  A dormouse?”

Danny was a piano player with hands that moved like pale birds in front of him when he talked.  He was bright, and creative, but somehow—flawed.  One night there he was, sitting on my sofa, emotions oozing from every pore, and I suddenly felt that I was looking at a man in some stage of evolution.  Some peculiar species of a man that had not been out of water long.  His pale blue eyes looked so limpid and wet, and when he reached out to touch me, it was as if his fingers became long thread-like cilia, trembling in the air between us.  I felt as if there might be tiny suction cups on his fingertips about to fasten themselves to my skin.

***
So many times I’ve fallen in love and watched as all my hopes and dreams rose above me like a kite—only to find I had no one to tie my string to. How could I tell him that the prince was never what I hoped to find—it was the magic.  Now that I’m all grown up, it’s the boys I used to play with as a child that I’m still in love with.  They are artists and musicians; they are Robin Hood and Peter Pan.  Our “dates” are more like my childhood adventures—treasured midnight hours spent exploring wild places in our neighborhoods and in ourselves.  And love, like a favorite hideaway, was a secret we kept.