“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be.”
As a kid, I had dozens and dozens of stuffed animals. They covered my bunk beds, and littered the floor of my room. They all had names and personalities; there were alliances and feuds. I loved them all.
In one of the more traumatic experiences of my childhood—which, I realize, is utterly benign as far as childhood traumas go—my parents gave me a trash bag and told me to fill it with the ones I liked the least. They were going to the Salvation Army.
So much anger, so many tears. Such injustice.
Somewhere on the road to adulthood, I let the majority of what was left find their way to new homes, but there have always been a few I didn’t have the heart to get rid of. The teddy bear my grandmother gave me, a polar bear that was as big as me when he showed up one Christmas.
Among the few keepers was a soft, handmade doll, with dark brown, curly yarn hair and painted on eyes. Under her orange and yellow flowered dress was a secret—lift the skirt up over her head, and it revealed a different doll: blonde, eyes closed, wearing a flannel nightgown.
I don’t think this doll ever had a name, and I’m not entirely sure why I kept it for so long, except I also found myself unable to get rid of it. I remembered cradling the doll in my small arms, rocking it to sleep. I remembered enjoying the softness of the flannel under my fingertips. I remember being delighted at flipping the dress back and forth to look at the different faces.
When I found the doll in a box a year or two ago, I thought, “I don’t really need to keep this,” and I pulled it out to put in my Senior Center pile, the Senior Center being home to the local thrift store. That pile and four or five of its successors left the house months ago, but every time, I’d pull the doll off and set her aside, not quite ready to let her go.
Last week, though, I was finally ready. After writing a piece about race, I wondered how much that doll had contributed to my notions of beauty. I didn’t like the dress the dark-haired doll wore, and I didn’t think she was as pretty. More often than not, the doll was flipped to the blonde side, the one with the tiny flowers on her nightgown. The more I thought about that, the more the doll made me angry. This time, she wasn’t rescued from the pile.
I felt good about my decision, finally able to let something go that I’d been toting around since childhood. I barely gave it a second thought.
Yesterday, the Senior Center was having a sidewalk sale at the same time as the Farmer’s Market in the adjacent parking lot. I eyeballed the tables full of bric-a-brac from afar as I bought my lettuce and plums. I didn’t really want to see my doll sitting there with a price tag on it, but something nudged me to take a look.
I saw a nice basket and picked it up. I sniffed a soy candle. I walked the length of the tables without seeing much. But I turned, and there she was, in the free bin.
I couldn’t very well leave her there. She’s back home with the teddy bears.
