Author Information
My grandmother’s dolls.
Since I was a little kid I remember getting to my grandmother’s house and seeing these amazing collection of dolls on a big glass cabinet by her bed. All porcelain dolls looking like real life kids. My grandmother has always loved to collect things, especially tiny things like perfumes, dress replicas, and small figures. But I have always admired her collection of dolls. Each doll had unique qualities: whether one’s a redhead, a blonde or a brunette, a princess, a 1920’s dressed up doll, a Victorian lady, among others. Every doll is in perfect condition since she got them, they have no scratches, none of them is broken and my grandmother still washes their clothes once in a while to keep the dust and some insects away. I remember asking her for permission to play with them, specifically the doll I loved the most, a beautiful porcelain doll dressed with pink baby clothes. As I grew up I started to feel afraid of them because my cousins would tell me stories about them, actually, there was a time my aunts and my mom asked my grandmother to put the dolls away because they scared us. For that time, my grandmother kept the dolls on an empty room, but she never got rid of them. Those dolls mean a lot to her since she and her family couldn’t afford any toy when she was a little girl, that’s why, when she finds beautiful porcelain dolls that caught her attention, she buys them and adds them to her collection. It doesn’t matter what everyone would do or say about the dolls, my grandmother would always keep them, and if for some reason she wouldn’t, the dolls would always end up again on my grandmother’s house. Even if my grandmother herself gave them as a gift to someone else, somehow the people managed to give them back to my grandmother. Those dolls would always find a way back to her house. They have actually been in every room of the house, and by ‘every room’ I really mean every room, even as decoration on the bathrooms. Sometimes my grandmother and aunts use them to decorate some events that have taken place on my grandmother’s house. Nowadays I feel like we are starting to feel affection to the dolls as well, and it’s better that way because it looks like they will stay with our family for a very long time.
