The Big Bag of Toys

Janey is continuing her current wonderful stretch of happiness, with a little more talking added in to the mix.  It's been fantastic.  I need to remember days like this when there are days way at the other end of the pendulum, that there are days when Janey is just amazingly sweet, happy, funny, cooperative, engaged...I need to savor every second of these days.

When looking for something in our cellar, I came across a huge bag of toys I had stored at some point.  I think I put them away when Janey was about 5, possibly during the awful, awful period of time she had then, when she cried for about 2 weeks on end.  My memory of that time is a little hazy, but I think I was trying to clear out the house to try to somehow make it better for Janey, and I decided to put away a lot of toys she had no interest in.  It was like a time capsule, almost---toys that Janey had liked at 2, but that by age 5 she ignored.  There were lots of Care Bears, assorted stuffed dogs, a Bitty Baby and a Cabbage Patch Doll.  It was hard looking at them all.  I remembered the boys gave her the Cabbage Patch Doll for her 2nd Christmas (with my help).  I bought the Bitty Baby actually for myself, actually, when I had realized I wasn't ever going to have a girl.  A month or so later, I was pregnant with Janey.  Janey loved dogs for her first few years more than anything, until she suddenly stopped noticing them, and then became extremely afraid of them.  And Care Bears?  There was a time when Janey knew their names, asked for them at stores, was a huge fan.

I decided to bring a few of the toys up, mainly the Bitty Baby and the Cabbage Patch Doll.  I had them waiting for Janey when she got home.  There wasn't any miracle---she didn't suddenly want to play dolls---but she looked at Bitty for a long time, especially her eyes.  And when I handed her Cabbage Patch, I wanted to think I saw a tiny bit of recognition in her face.  I asked her "What is the doll's name?" and she actually said "It's name is Til...." and then looked away.  I jumped on it---"Her name is Tilly?  Hi, Tilly!  Are you Janey's doll?  Let's play with Tilly!"  Janey humored me with a smile, and I had Tilly kiss her, I brushed Tilly's hair, we looked at her fingers and toes and belly button---I had fun.  Janey I don't think really cared, but she didn't actively try to stop me.

I think the dolls are going to stay around for a while.  I think I'm ready for it.  They don't make me as sad as they did for a while.  I know the long, long ago Janey that had an interest in them might not be coming back.  But the Janey I have now---well, if she doesn't want to play with dolls, it is okay.  She has her own things.  She loves to run and jump, she has varied and cool taste in music, she can run YouTube like a pro, and just this morning, when one of her classmates greeted her, she let go of my hand and went to hold her friend's hand, and smiled a huge smile.  Janey is becoming her own person.  Like any child, she is not always exactly the child I pictured.  I am not blinded to the reality that she is in many ways severely disabled, that she is not like other children in some very big ways, that her life will be affected hugely by her limitations.  But with all that being said, she is perfect at being Janey, and I love the Janey she is.

Over the American Girl Catalog

I never really dreamed of having a girl for a lot of the reasons I've heard of.  I'm not terribly into frilly clothes, I certainly am not into pageants, I almost never wear makeup or paint my fingernails or buy new clothes.  I never had a dream of a big wedding, or ballet classes, or Disney Princesses.  But I did have one big dream for a girl I might someday have.  I had a dream of getting her an American Girl doll.

Of course, there weren't American Girl dolls when I was little, but there were sure dolls.  And that was one part of being a girl I embraced heartily.  My sister Carrie and I had lots of dolls, and lots of doll clothes.  We each had a doll family, and we played dolls often.  We added a lot of twists to it---our dolls had a rare genetic disease that one after one they were tragically diagnosed with---Ingalls Syndrome.  It was named I think in honor of Laura Ingalls Wilder, although it had nothing to do with her.  It resulted in the dolls being, well, doll-like, floppy and unable to walk on their own.  Despite their challenges, our dolls lived full lives of going to school and visiting their cousins, all of which required a lot of changes of clothes and elaborate setups.  When I was even younger, I had a favorite doll named Janie, after my aunt.  You might guess where Janey got her name---after the aunt and my doll.  Dolls were a huge part of my life.

And then, pretty much as I entered adulthood, there came the American Girl dolls.  The first time I saw a catalog, I knew that someday, I would have a little girl and she would sit with me, looking at said catalog, and we would decide what girl would be hers.  We would order it, and then every Christmas and birthday, we would get a few more of the clothes and accessories.  Maybe, we would get a second doll at some point, so they could be friends.  It would be a wonderful mother-daughter bonding time.  Each new catalog would thrill us.  The doll would be almost like one of the family.

And then, I had two boys.  They are wonderful kids, but despite me trying, they never got into dolls.  Believe, I tried more than most people thought was normal, but they were not doll lovers.  The moment the nurse told me on the phone that child #3 was going to be a girl, I screamed, called Tony and started thinking about the American Girl catalog.  Sick, yes, but I am admitting it here.

You know a lot of the rest of the story.  When Janey was three, old enough to be the age that was supposed to be ready for American Girls, to not choke on all the adorable little accessories, she was diagnosed as autistic. I still of course had my doll plans.  But I put them aside, and realized they were pretty unimportant. That they always had been unimportant, a dream of mine and not of Janey's.  I did get her dolls, of course, and I tried mightily to interest her in them, without success.  She didn't, and doesn't, play imaginatively.  She liked tossing the dolls around sometimes (much like her brothers had), but not certainly sitting them down at their expensive little tables and feeding them their expensive pretend picnic lunches or loading their expensive backpacks with expensive adorable tiny school supplies.  

The American Girl Dolls catalogs kept arriving, of course, and I kept looking.  In most ways, I think I've been fairly good at accepting Janey as she is, but in that one little way, I kept dreaming of a Janey that wasn't.

So it shocked me a bit yesterday when the big Christmas American Girl catalog arrived.  I waited until Janey was asleep to look at it.  And I realized, quite quickly, I was over it.  I no longer cared a thing about it, or about Janey not being the girls in it, playing with their dolls.  In fact, the girls looked annoying to me.  Didn't they have anything better to do in life than pose their dolls?  Were their parents so full of money and stupid as to shell out big bucks for tiny little doll shoes or miniature pastries or Julie's new VW?  Why did all the girl models look so cookie-cutter---diverse on the surface, but all neurotypical?  And why was the American Girl world so phony?  Why did even historical girls have modern aspirations?  Why is every doll and girl thin and perfectly groomed and able to afford vast numbers of accessories?  Why are they all into sports and fair play and friends?  Why are none of them shy, or awkward, or preferring to sit and read over getting out there and having exciting yet safe adventures?  Why are none of them autistic?

I realized I no longer long for that world, which I guess has always been more than just a doll thing.  I don't long for that life, the life of the perfect American Girl, or American girl in lower case, the dream we are supposed to dream of.  I still wish life was much easier for Janey.  I wish she wasn't autistic, because that is a hard life for her.  But I don't wish any more, not at all, for the girl that would want an American Girl.  I'm over that.  I have the girl I have, and she is just as much an American girl as any of them.  More so than the plastic, accessory rich, expensive version, because she is real.

Re-entry

Tony and I got away overnight for our anniversary, thanks to my parents, which was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It seemed like much longer than a day and night. The hard part, though, is coming home. It's getting harder each time I am away for a day, which isn't too often, but does happen occasionally (thanks, Julie!) I guess coming back gives me a perspective on Janey, and sometimes that is hard. She has been in a great mood this week, and was very good for my parents, so it wasn't a behavior issue. It was more my own issue. I think I have a dream of her being very excited to see me after the day away, or at least seeming to notice I'm gone or ask for me. I know that she does notice, I know she's happy to have me back, but sometimes, I dream of that big hug, or at least her asking where I am, which isn't something she would really know how to ask. When I saw her first yesterday, she barely looked at me. And as I said, it's my issue, not hers. It's what I wanted, not what she needed to do.

It made me think about more aspects of her autism and delays that are hard for me, and not perhaps for her. As we waited for the lunch place yesterday to open, I couldn't resist stopping into the American Girl Doll store. There's a real fantasy---even if Janey had the slightest desire for such a doll, I couldn't afford to get into that world. But it's one of those mother things. I would love her to WANT one. And it makes me wonder if in some ways I am like those mothers I like to laugh at and be disgusted by when I can't help myself and watch my guilty pleasure show, "Toddlers and Tiaras" There are parts of being a mother that are just for the mother, not the kids. Janey doesn't know that American Girl Dolls exist. She doesn't know that I would like her to be excited to see me. She doesn't know I had dreams of introducing my little girl to books I loved and reading along through the series of Little House or Narnia or Oz books with her. She doesn't know how I thought about going into toy stores with her and discussing which new Calico Critter we would be able to get, or even how I daydreamed about arguments we would have over clothes. Those are my regrets, not hers.

And of course I know---even if Janey were not autistic, she'd be her own person and might have absolutely no interest in any of those things. I don't need to be reminded of that, even though it's only myself reminding me. Or maybe I do. I need to be reminded that when Janey is happy, I need to be happy along with her, even if what makes her happy is not my dreams for her. She is happy asking for oatmeal, watching the Care Bears, listening to "Keep on the Sunny Side" for the four-hundredth time. I'm glad she has her own things that make her happy. We all need to have those, and I need to remember that.