About Two-Faced Dolls

The other day I woke up wondering about two-sided dolls. As child I once received a hand-made doll whom you could turn upside down, and there her face looked sad and forlorn. I was scared of her, though I didn't know why, at the time. She was made very well; she smiled in thin, bright red yarn features and had wide open pale blue stitched eyes. She wore a long velvet dress that was - I want to say dark green, but that is probably because I like dark green - I can't really remember the color, only the soft texture.
When I turned her upside down, she wore a cotton gown, pouted with an upside down mouth, and squinted her eyes into an almost angry frown.

I must have been between four and five at the time, as old as my friend Vera. Her brother, Gerhard, was a few years ahead of us and quite sophisticated. He said my doll was having an ugly baby. I wasn't sure what that meant - babies came in baskets, brought by our stork who was busy building a nest on the church steeple.

Much later I thought that the doll must have upset me because I could not depend on her. Her beautiful, smiling face evoked one emotion, the sad face a different one. It was already difficult to adjust to the adults' ever-changing moods at the time, wartime made them tense, absent-minded and and sad. In the air raid shelter we children played games and slept in bunk beds; it was like visiting with relatives; parents engaged each other in conversation and left us to our own devices, which meant we were rather happy. But at home, at any time, laughter could turn into a look of worry and a sharply spoken "don't do this .... or that." A favorite toy, a doll, a teddy bear, a book was the only reliable companion, always the same, yet open to interpretation, open to the whims of imagination. Not the two-faced doll though. She had her rules, top side smiling, underside not. The swish of her gown decided her mood and no amount of cradling relieved the stressed bottom face, and spanking did not wipe the smile off her top face.

I think that imagination is a child's very good friend. We joke about the child playing with the box instead of the gift it held, or simple blocks being preferred over more complicated toys. At the age of seven I was given a shoe box which I made into a doll house with the help of a few pieces of cloth, very small containers, scraps of wood and a few lengths of yarn. I spent hours rearranging furniture, cutting out windows and a door, hanging pictures, making a carpet, pillows, and a table cloth. I remember the exact spots I sat on while getting my shoe box ready for a promised mini baby doll. Back stairs to our apartment. A low retaining wall in a friend's front yard. A bench in the busy market place where, every afternoon, several old men gathered to exchange their daily ailment stories. One of them whittled a rustic little chair and a table for me. We called him Herr Wackelzahn (Mr. Wiggletooth) because he only had one tooth left. Well, Herr Wackelzahn quickly became my hero and I no longer moved away in fear when his tongue manipulated the remaining dental ruin.

All my reflections don't mean that I only believe in simple toys; I think that e-readers and fancy light-up crayon boards and dolls who weep and go potty, are reasonable additions to children's toy boxes as long as there is also access to basics like plain paper, cloth remnants, and cardboard boxes. My childhood was, probably, constrained by post-war poverty, leading me into a kind of make-do reality, which I now look to as an advantage in the imagination department.

And, I have to admit that my curiosity was aroused, when I saw that the American Doll Company opened a store in Palo Alto, a kind of spa where child and doll can spend time getting their hair done or having a meal of macaroni and cheese. Unfortunately the café tables are booked for lunch service until March of next year. Now this made me laugh out loud.

For the record and because this is supposed to be a blog about knitting teddy bears I must now check on my Bear friends. Matata's boys are still waiting for a few of their brothers, and will continue their saga next time. On day 11 of KindSpring.org's 21-Day Gratitude challenge. I was asked to reflect on something that made me smile and without hesitation I thought about waking up to a cute little bear that had kept me awake almost all night. I had bought the yarn for it during a burst of energy when left-over yarn was no longer enough. Then I knitted from six in the evening until four in the morning. And here she is; her name is Chant. Bear 285.