Maternal Dementia

Like a bad penny, she just keeps turning up.

It all started as a parting gift, but now she is a fixture in our home. And I don’t know whether to be amused or horrified by her.

Last summer the girls were invited to a birthday celebration. A late July party is not easy to populate; most Parisians are away on vacation. The birthday-boy’s mother was thrilled to learn that we were in town that weekend and that the both Short-pants and Buddy-roo could attend. I dropped them at the appointed hour and they tumbled through the door and made themselves at home, taking over the apartment as though it was their own. How kids fall into play so quickly.

Since we’re a take-turns kind of family, De-facto was charged with retrieving our children after the party. He returned home with two girls and one life-sized plastic doll. The boy’s mother had insisted, De-facto said, and the girls had pleaded to let her come home to their community of dolls. What could he say? (“No, thank you,” comes to mind, but in what was probably a slightly awkward moment, this didn’t occur to him.)

There’s something terribly discomforting about the doll. That she is nearly the same height as Buddy-roo wouldn’t be so bad except she has the anatomical features of someone much more mature. She has breasts – perky, pointed ones – and her waist is inhumanely narrow compared to them. She came wearing one outfit: low-rider jeans and a Daisy-Mae midriff top. When you attempt to arrange her legs so that she might be seated, they spread apart. She is a tart.

I call her that big doll, as in “please take that big doll upstairs to your room.”

Last summer, Ricky and Lucy hosted more than a few lovely, lingering, Sunday brunches in our courtyard. And of course, that big doll found her way to the table. I tried to ditch her by sliding her between the sheets of Ricky and Lucy’s bed. It got a good laugh and a few compromising photographs, but no ransom was required for her return.

When the tornado twins stayed in our home while we were gone, I’m told that big doll was a huge hit and afforded many opportunities for curious kinds of play. This might explain, too, why the birthday-boy’s mother was rather eager to find the doll a new home.

That big doll usually stands in the corner of Buddy-roo’s bedroom, and yet I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly jumped out of my skin, startled by her life-size presence beside the basket of stuffed animals. Weeks pass where the girls ignore her, preferring their other dolls, yet any suggestion that she might find a new place to live is met with tears and pleas for mercy.

Our next-door neighbor asked the girls if they wanted to select a few toys that they don’t play with anymore to donate to a Christmas toy-drive for needy children. Both Short-pants and Buddy-roo demonstrated great philanthropic spirit. After an exhaustive inventory, they prepared a generous bag of toys and dolls that had fallen out of favor but were still in good condition. I didn’t even ask if that big doll could join the out-basket. I simply placed her on top of the bag with the other toys, in front of our neighbor’s door.

I just returned from a week-long trip to find that the bag of give-away toys had been taken, but my nemesis had stayed behind; that big doll was standing outside our door, glaring at me. It’s like a Stephen King novel; she will not disappear and she seems more evil each time I try to dispose of her. I’m not sure if our neighbor left the doll because Buddy-roo had persuaded her to, or if she just didn’t want to be seen carrying that big doll to the office.

With a style that puts the Silahis to shame, that big doll crashed our Thanksgiving dinner, turning up topless at the table after the cheese course. She managed to break one of my crystal champagne glasses while reaching for a cigar. She was the one who polished off the last of the cognac.

And I know what’s coming. We’re cooking a Christmas Goose with Ricky and Lucy this weekend; the double entendres will be too tempting. She’s so very clever, she must know I can’t possibly throw her out during the holiday season. I guess I just have to learn to live with that big doll.

There was a pre-toddler in my house all last week, a baby boy, blindingly blond with thoughtful round blue eyes. A drunken sailor staggering around our living room. He took instantly to Short-pants and Buddy-roo, who are closer to his size and less threatening. De-facto had spent time with him before, so they rediscovered their kinship rather swiftly. But I was a tall stranger. Even though I’m family – I’m his aunt – he’d never laid eyes on me
before in his one-year long life. So I waited and watched from the side, actually almost lurking, because I wanted him to know that I was interested in his affection, if he ever cared to offer it. But I kept my distance from the little man, which is – for real – what my sister-in-love and her De-facto call their baby boy. Little man.

I remember when I was little, visiting my grandmother. She lived in a condominium complex with a long swimming pool and a shuffleboard court, which I thought was terribly exotic. She had a friend, an older, ugly man with bad breath who always wanted to hug me. I don’t believe he ever wanted to do more than that, but still, I didn’t want even the casual nice-to-see-you-oh-you’re-so-grown-up embrace from him. It was a real treat to visit Grammy – she cooked corn-fritters from scratch and made thick, icy, piña coladas – but I dreaded running into her creepy friend. A big oath by a small child can be a powerful thing: I promised myself that when I grew up I’d never force my hugs upon an unwilling little person.

Instead I crouched down across from the little man, day-by-day, hoping to become more familiar, to become someone he might trust. Each day, a little closer. A short conversation, from a distance. A smile, a song. Then it came, the moment, several days in, when, without any coaxing he actually stumbled into my arms and allowed me, without squirming, to pick him up and carry him around.

My failing memory had blocked it out – until he was in my arms and it all came back – what it is to hold a big baby who’s so compact, solid and muscled. He’s a little peanut but he’s dense, the robust force of his all-boy energy like cutting open a vacuum-sealed bag. His miniature feet clamped at my waist. His fat index finger tested my nose. He smelled like milk.

And I thought, how could it be that my daughters were once this size and I could hold and hug them close to my chest? How could it be that once, only a few years ago, these long straws in a tall soda glass that stand before me now could have been little and round and nestled in my arms just like this?

Impossible.

Yesterday, after the long-faced trek down four flights of stairs with suitcases and the stroller and the this and the that which are required for long distance travel with a one-year old, De-facto reluctantly handed the little man back to his sister so she could buckle him in his car seat. Hugs goodbye with tears and promises not to wait so long for the next trans-Atlantic visit. We stood in the street waving as they drove away, until the taxi disappeared from sight.

Upstairs, the chaos left in the wake of the little man’s staggering-around play was waiting for us. We did not clear it away. We sat on the floor with the girls, laying out Brio track, piece by piece, building a seamless route to move trains around our living room, wishing – futilely – that our children could stay just as they are – small and huggable – forever.