Boys and Dolls
As a young child, my father encouraged me to get outside, to play and work hard, to do my best, to be strong. He did this in his wordless way. He handed me a rake and together we moved great piles of oak leaves to his composting spots. He let me help dig holes for the shrubbery we planted at our new house. He showed me how to change the tires on the car. He let me hammer and saw and chop wood. My mother did not interfere. Instead, she proclaimed, "I grew up knowing how to do nothing. I don't want you to be that way." Unlike my mother and her sisters, I became a tomboy.
At home, being a tomboy was easy. When my father was around the house, he was happy for me to help him and, fortunately, most of the time my mother was preoccupied. She taught, she worked on her Masters degree, she frantically cleaned house with what little time she had left. I was free to roam the woods with my dog, a black and white border collie with an Irish setter mother that froze in a perfect point when he spotted squirrels, but barked madly when we stumbled upon land terrapins in the woods.
At school, however, my life was a battle. I fought for my space in the boys' world, getting picked for their teams, running as fast as the fastest of them. I suffered taunting from jealous males---"all you are is a stupid girl." I was shoved down on the blacktop, losing the skin on the palm of my hand. With the rest of the tumbling heap, I had to write 25 times: I must not play so rough at recess. I was the only girl who lined up to play outside during the coldest weeks of winter. I did not wear dresses or play with dolls. I raged because girls did not always get to do the things that boys were allowed to do.
Once in second grade, our teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Two boys said, "a doctor." A girl said, "a nurse." The class became stuck on the two professions. For several rows, every boy said “doctor” and every girl said “nurse.” When the question reached me, I rebelled. "A doctor," I said. The boy who reveled in calling me "a stupid girl" rose to his feet, turned backward and leaned across another student's desk, like a movie cowboy leans on the poker table when he intends to draw his weapon, "Girls can't be doctors," he snarled at me. I sat calmly while the very nice teacher informed him, “Girls can be doctors,“ My set up had worked perfectly.
I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a park ranger and have a dog like Lassie, or move to Alaska and mush a sled with Silver Chief Dog of the North in the lead, but instead of saying that, I fought a battle and made my point.
Because I constantly fought to hold my ground as a different kind of girl, I did a lot of things that I did not really like to do. Playing baseball and football was a cultural requirement for boys, so I played them too. Truly, soccer, basketball and volleyball are my favorite sports. They are far less structured than football and baseball. In soccer passing the ball in any direction may actually set up for the winning goal---there is no relentless press forward as there is in football, no adhering to baselines, no waiting on deck. You can use the trunk of your body, your feet, and even your head to maneuver the ball. Carrying the thing around in your hands all the time is just boring. In basketball, there is constant motion, no hanging out on bases or in the outfield. Basketball, soccer, and volleyball command my complete attention at every moment that I am in the game. I am freed from the rest of the world, from myself. The structural hyperbole of baseball and football kill the enjoyment for me; my mind wanders and I am robbed of my release. My husband put his finger on the difference once when he innocently observed, "I bet you've never played much golf, have you?" "Only one time," I replied. “And you hated it," he said. I nodded affirmatively. “How’d you know?” I asked him."Too convergent,“ he answered, “spending all that time getting that ball into a little hole."
As I passed from grade to grade, it seemed to me that there was almost always some boy leaning over a desk trying to stifle me. In elementary school there was a bragging athlete who I surpassed in the broad jump. I was also able to bag his otherwise homeruns. I could get to the long balls that he hit. I could see right where they were headed. Most of the time I caught them before they touched the ground. The other times I was able to heave the ball to third base and stop him on second. He called me names, turned attention to me when I made any kind of mistake and laughed loudly when he put me down. I did not understand the dynamic of our interactions. I knew only that I needed to fight to preserve my place. Otherwise, closet fulls of dresses and pink sneakers would descend upon me and I would not be allowed to roam in the woods with my dog.
Maintaining my right to be independent like a boy kept me on the agitated side, like an animal defending its territory. Much of the time I was sad and lonely. My dog became my confident. I sat in the yard and talked to him while I cried. I was in a submarine, pressing with my hands and arms, feet and legs, in all directions, trying to keep the water from caving in and drowning who I thought I was. I had to be smart, I had to be strong, I could not rest or make a mistake. I had dug myself into a hole like Mike Mulligan's steam shovel, Mary Anne. I needed someone from the outside to help me see myself, like the little boy who recognized Mary Anne's warmth and suggested that she become the furnace for the new town hall, but help was years away. In the meantime, my female role model, my mother, remained preoccupied with her multitude of responsibilities. At best, she was too consumed to think about me. At worst, she plunged into my life at full throttle, trying to force me to be what her moment-to-moment insecurities told her I should be.
For many Christmases, my mother bought me collectible dolls. A tradition that we remembered with humor in later years. She bought me the dolls she loved and as I grew older, I gave her the beautifully illustrated children’s books I admired.
Before we sorted out our dueling gift-giving habits and laughed together, I was allowed to play with only two of the dolls I received. The first was a Ginny bride doll. I received Ginny when I was 4 or 5—before I was forced by the outer world to enter the battle to maintain my tomboy status. I carried Ginny around in a wooden box that was supposed to house my brother's microscope. As was my true bent, I spent more playtime outside than inside and so did Ginny. Unfortunately for her, I forgot to bring the box in one afternoon and poor Ginny remained outside, in the microscope box, during a thunderstorm. When my mother found her a few days later, her wig was falling off and her bridal gown a mess. My mother ordered a replacement wig from the doll company and washed Ginny's gown. When the wig arrived, my father glued it on Ginny's bald head. My mother wasn't satisfied with Ginny's new do. Originally, her hair had been dark---like my grandmother's. Now it was much lighter---actually, closer to the shade of my mother's hair. Also, washing had crinkled the satin underskirt of Ginny's gown. In dismay, my mother set up the ironing board and attempted to press the tiny satin dress with her full-sized iron. As she struggled, she told me, "You're not playing with this doll anymore."
The second doll that I played with was Madame Alexander's version of Jo March from Little Women. By that time, I had been pegged as a tomboy, and since Jo was also a tomboy, I accepted her. My mother actually preferred the outfits worn by Jo's sister dolls, but she must have sensed that Jo was the key to persuading me to accept the others, so Jo arrived one Christmas. In our post-Ginny world, on occasion I was allowed to take Jo out of her box and look at her and put her back in. Marme, Beth, Meg, Amy and even Laurie made their appearances at subsequent Christmases. It was my mother's plan to find an attractive, curved glass-fronted cabinet in which to display the dolls. She wished for the cabinet not quite as often as she wished my father would clean out the basement. An organized basement and a glass-fronted cabinet full of Madame Alexander dolls were at the top of her list of most frequently expressed fantasies.
We never acquired a cabinet for the dolls; they remained stored in their boxes on the top shelf of my closet. Occassionally, I would take the dolls out and assemble them on some super clean surface to look at them. I thought that most of the family was dressed about right. Marmee had a duster on her head. Amy was wearing pink, Meg looked older and had a jewel at her neck like Marmed, Beth was sweet in a light violet color, but Jo would never be able to wipe an ink pen on her apron without anyone noticing. In order to truly portray Jo, that apron would have to be black, but apparently, Madame Alexander had made Jo dress up for her toy store debut, just as my mother sporadically forced me to.
Some time well after I was out of college—after I had completed my own Masters degree—my mother and I assembled the family once again on a very clean bedspread to take a look. My mom reached for Jo, attempting to smooth the doll’s slightly mussed hair. The truth was: Jo was her favorite too. My mother had completed college when other girls of her era had not. Her undergraduate degree was in physics and she had a masters in botany. She had waited to have children, turning 40 four and a half months after I was born. She resented cooking and left things on the stove to burn as if it were a religious practice, preferring to read or get some other project accomplished. We lost countless tea kettles because she did not have the patience to wait for water to boil. The advent of the microwave probably prevented her from burning down my parents’ home. In her own way, my mother was a tomboy too—pushing boundaries and shedding the roles external forces assigned to her. Still, as she placed the doll back on the bedspread with her sisters, my mom tried one last time to tame Jo’s errant strands of hair and, with a trace of admonishment lingering in her voice, she looked at me and said, "You played with this one."