Christmas Memories #1

When I was a small girl I lived in Woodbury, New Jersey. Lots of interesting stuff went on there, back in the day. A passenger train ran through the town, because there was a war on and public transportation was a necessity, what with gasoline and tires being rationed. My best friend, Deborah, and I used to hang out at the station and watch the trains go by, loaded with soldiers. Roxby's, where you could get candy, ice cream, and comic books, was right across the tracks on Cooper Street. I can still recall the smell, a rich mixture of chocolate, licorice and newsprint.

Perhaps in an effort to keep me off the street my mother signed me up for Bluebirds. Deb was in it too. Bluebirds was to Campfire Girls what Brownies is to Girl Scouts. We met once a week, paying four cents dues. The meetings opened with one of the girls lighting a candle. I could not do this, since my mother had forbidden me ever to touch matches. Neither did I know by heart half the Christmas carols we all went out one night and sang. Ever the green monkey. Sometime I'll tell you what my life was like at the Catholic grade school, as the only protestant. But enough about Sister Heinrich Himmler. I was telling you about Bluebirds.

We were assigned a project. How long did we have? I can't recall; perhaps a month. Each Bluebird was to make and furnish a doll's house to give to one of the sick children in Cooper Hospital, which in those days was in Woodbury. Awards were to be given. Deb and I fell to and madly designed furniture, mostly chests of drawers made out of match boxes, which we had in plenty since our parents smoked to excess to accompany their drinking. Then we made things to put in the drawers, cutting out make-believe doll clothes with scissors. Our houses were cardboard boxes, but we couldn't figure out how to make them look anything like dwelling places for dolls. Just the same, we were keeping busy.

Then the deadline came rushing at us. In three days we were to produce furnished doll houses, and all we had were cardboard cartons and matchboxes full of ratty scraps. My mother was appalled. Deb's mother was appalled. Naturally they took over the work and produced credible doll's houses, painted, papered, windowed, doored. We brought them to the next meeting, along with our mothers. Penny something, I think her name was, won first prize. Her doll's house was beautifully constructed of masonite with glassine windows and practical, hinged doors. It was painted cream-color. Penny, blushing with pride, stood up and collected her blue ribbon.

Then the troop leader read off all the names receiving honorable mention, which was to say, us losers. We were supposed to stand up. My mother almost stood up, she said, since she had done all the work. Well, Penny's father had clearly done all the work on her house. But, so what? It was nothing to Deb and me. And then we all picked up our doll's houses and paraded down the street to the hospital.

"What? Why?" said Penny.

"We're supposed to give them away," I said. It was the whole point. She had not understood this.

I still remember the look of delight on the face of the little sick girl who got Penny's dollhouse. Even more clearly I remember Penny's howls of despair. Yes, she wept, and loudly, standing in the doorway of the little sick girl's hospital room, so that her handy and clever-fingered father (Why was he not at war? I now ask myself. Must have had one of those essential jobs) had to pick her up and carry her away. My mother clucked disapprovingly. Deb and I felt somehow vindicated.

There's a moral in there somewhere about how to have a Merry Christmas, but I can't quite put my finger on it.