The Plain Christmas Doll

When I was a child, we lived with my Nana because that’s how Italian people do. In order to live above your means before credit cards, extended families would pile in together and share expenses. Over time, various branches of my family got involved with possibly Mafia-related activities, like a taxi business or a storm door business, although none of them actually drove taxis or sold storm doors. It was very hush-hush what they did. But they no longer needed to live with the family. They had their own big houses with sofas and lamps permanently kept in their showroom plastic covers.

Visiting my cousins was like stepping into a fairy world of figurines, and elaborate children’s rooms with canopied beds. They had ribbons in their hair and buckles on their shoes and were dressed like little brides in their confirmation photos, even the boys. My father declined to work for the “taxi business” because occasionally someone ended up dead, so we stayed in the family house.

We shared a single bedroom with bunks and roll-out beds, while Nana had the upstairs rooms. Even though her hairdressing job didn’t seem even vaguely Mafia-related, she had the fancy furniture, the figurines and art deco lamps. Children weren’t allowed upstairs when she wasn’t home, but I would sneak up anyway because she had something even more amazing than a replica of the Pieta with a lamp coming out of Saint Mary’s back. She had little candy dishes perpetually filled with M&Ms. This was luxury beyond my imagination.

I was careful to take only one or two every time I went on a reconnaissance mission so she would not know I had been there, and this is how – while searching for the actual whole bag of M&Ms – I found the Revlon dolls.

Revlon dolls were tall with rigid plastic bodies and soft, beautifully made up faces, glass eyes fringed with thick lashes. They had grown woman figures, elaborate hair-dos, earrings, pearl necklaces, shoes and nylon stockings. They were super-sized Barbies before the Coming of Barbie. All the dolls I found had elaborate costumes – velvet dresses with feathered matching hats, brocade ball gowns with tiaras – except one. The plain hatless Revlon doll wore a simple, gauzy pink dress and white sandals.

On Christmas morning, when I opened my gift from Nana, it was the plain doll. The fancy dolls had gone to my rich cousins. Before Nana died –she lived to 96, despite chain smoking Kent cigarettes all her life  – I asked her, as one adult to another, why she had given me – the grandchild who lived with her – the plain doll.

“You weren’t used to nice things,” she said, without hesitation. “Your cousins were. I had to do better for them.” My appalled reaction didn’t faze her in the least. “When my own kids were little, sometimes I gave them nothing for Christmas so I could give my boss’ children nice gifts.” It made perfect sense to her.

I still have that sad plain Revlon doll. Occasionally I check eBay to see what I could get if I sold it, but I probably never will because it is my spirit of Christmas, it is the lesson I have never forgotten.

Don’t be like Nana.
And eat all the M&Ms every chance you get.