The Distortion of Time
And tiny vampires
Growing up, I loved to play with dolls, barbies, doll houses.
Like a lot of young girls do, but not mine. She has never liked dolls, barbies, or doll houses.
She likes stuffed animals, and Calico Critters, and their critter houses, but never dolls.
Honestly, I think when she was very young they scared her a little bit. Freaked her out with their tiny human features. Their creepy smiles that never fade.
I loved to play “house” with my friends. I think they call it “family” now.
The game where you pretend to be a family—two kids are the parents, a few are the kids of the family and someone is the family pet. You make up scenarios as you go along; “pretend that we are going to the store and the baby starts crying.” “Pretend the brother and sister get in a fight.”
I love to listen in on kids playing family/house. It’s a fascinating game. A reflection of their little worlds. A way to process their daily experiences. Try on life’s roles on their own terms.
It was the same type of pretend play with Barbies and Doll houses. My friend’s and I would divvy up the doll houses, dolls, accessories, furniture, and cars, Then we would each find a corner of the room and create our dolls’ homes, decide their lives for them.
It was the best part. Seeing what we each came up with. Being inspired by how my friend, Alicia, arranged the furniture in my doll house in a way I never would have come up with. She, thinking outside of the box of my own brain.
I loved this. Lived for these games with dolls and friends.
I think a lot of this love, was the designing part—designing the homes. Creating the family—two kids or three, or five? One dog or two? A dog and a cat? What about a horse? What kind of family will this be? Religious, playful, funny, chaotic? Will they live in the city, suburbs, country, or on a working farm?
What imaginary scenarios could we come up with for them? Are they going on vacation, or are they stuck in a mundane patch of life—dinner, homework, school on repeat?
The perpetual hamster wheel of life.
Will there be a birthday party for one of the kids the following weekend? Will the siblings bicker all day long, or will they be best friends?
In every single game—whether it was playing “house” or Barbies, or Dolls, or doll houses, the family was an eternal assignment of itself.
The parents never aged. The dog never died. The baby was always a baby. The sister was always two. The older brother was always 5.
On and on the family lived, young and cocooned in that stage of their lives.
Perpetually suspended in time.
In our young, idealistic minds this is how we imagined our futures.
Our partners would always be young, dashing and the most gorgeous versions of themselves. Our babies would always be babies. Our son would always be 7. Our dogs never died.
Some of this washed away with aging and maturing—with the hard-earned wisdom that comes with growing up.
We learned to compromise…
Okay, the dog might die.
Will die.
It will be heartbreaking.
Yes, my husband will age, but he will always be dashing and handsome.
But as we, ourselves, grew up, I don’t think we fully realized our kids will grow up.
We know they will in the logical, rational, adult part of our brains. But in that idealistic, childish, childhood part of our brains, they don’t, won’t, cannot possibly.
On some primal, fantastical level they never grow up.
They will always live under our roofs. They will always be 7 and 10.
Each night we will play board games at our dining room table, under the soft glow of the lights. Just how we pictured it. How we designed it.
Forever, we will snuggle together under the covers at bedtime and chat about their day.
There will not be a time when toys, artwork, and the clutter of school, birthday parties, trips to the grocery store, (where they begged for the chicken that is gum ball machine—the gum balls the eggs), and snack wrappers won’t clutter every surface of our homes.
It will never be quiet. It will aways be loud and noisy, and busy.
There will always be a dog barking, a baby crying, a toddler throwing a tantrum.
A little boy building a Lego set at the kitchen counter. A little girl sitting at the dining room table, with craft supplies stacked around her.
There will be an everlasting beckoning to read one more story before bed.
Won’t life always be the way it was for the dolls and Barbies that lived in our doll houses?
The only way I can attempt an explanation for this strange phenomenon; is that our minds can’t process them growing up in real time.
Our minds get stuck in past dimensions, time and space. It’s that certain weird shock we get on the days where we realize our kids aren’t 2 and 5 anymore. They stopped liking Scooby Doo six years ago.
And how did this happen? And when?
According to quantum physics this might be possible. That all the little pockets of our lives go on living in other dimensions. The day you went to the pool in 2016 is still being lived over and over again on some other plane in time and space.
We think on some childish, Peter Pan level that this will never happen to us. We won’t be the ones whose children grow up and go off to college. Who leave us to start their own lives.
I attribute some of the blame to our dolls, our pretend play, our dollhouses, Barbie, and the plastic dog that looked like Lassie and was forever only three.
I blame the doll house, that never changed, for this illusion— with its rope rugs permanently painted on the floors, the oil painting of flowers in a vase on the wall, never leaning to the left or the right, always perfectly straight.
For misleading us.
Making us think that we could have the everlasting lives our dolls had.
And aren’t they so damn lucky? With their babies always crying, their dogs always barking, their son who is always 5?
Except then, one day, you will find yourself, alone and aging in an elevator with a young mother and her tiny children at the local Jewish Community Center—just outside of the Early Childhood Center where your own children attended pre-k such a short time ago.
You will ask yourself what happened? Where did the time go?
It seems like only yesterday this was you. You were this young mother with your tiny children inside of this elevator at the JCC with the older woman who has a startled look of sadness in her eyes.
At first.
But then, this young mom will take a second peek at this aging mother, and this older mom will give her a small and tender smile.
A smile that says; we all get our turns in life.
Our turn to be the young mother with the tiny kids.
At some point, we get to be the middle-aged mom with the halfway grown kids. Who has the best of all the worlds in that moment in time.
Then the empty nest mom, trying to remember a life before her children.
Then, alas, we get a turn to be the mom who is rediscovering who she is. What she likes to do now that her kids are grown.
A mom who is happy with how it all turned out.
Content.
This mom finally understands, we can’t have the lives our dolls had, but the lives we really get are pretty great and aren’t we glad we aren’t stuck with our arms bent at the elbows and our feet standing on their toes?
A smile plastered to our faces for eternity.
The green shirt painted on our skin, never to be pink, or orange or purple.
Our hair permanently neon yellow and cut short.
Somewhere all of those dolls you played with still exist.
Maybe they have aged from generations of little fingers gripping them—their faces smeared and blurred. The only defining feature that remains, a sharp pointy nose.
The family dog chipped and worn, its coat faded, an eye that has been rubbed white.
Stuck forever. Wanting and hoping for change, growth, memories. For time to move ahead.
Tiny vampires, rendered ageless and timeless.
And so it is. Life moves forward.
We march on, yet, somewhere in the mind of that inner child still living within us, we are shocked by it.
Surprised at how time propels us forward, ready or not.
Like it or not, we will not have the life of our dolls.
Fear
It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way. The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the rim of entering the ocean because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.
by, Kahlil Gibran
Interesting perspective Carly!
It's been awhile, but yes...such 'control' we had when playing house/family, with no sense of reality, just everything how we wanted it to be! Looking back very fondly on those years 😘
This is very profound. I had a big dolls house when I was young. It is still at my Mum's house. Every year we think about selling it then never quite get around to it! And I had a number of Barbie dolls, Cindy and Tressie (whose hair would grow if you pressed her belly button and pulled it!) and these are also in my Mum's loft. There are so many treasures from mine and my brother's childhood up there!