A few years ago as my oldest daughter was planning her business trip to Moscow she asked me what I wanted her to bring me back from Russia. I said then that I wanted a statue of V. Lenin with his outstretched arm. Every town used to have a few. on that square and this, hat in hand, arm outstretched, or arm outstretched, the hand also extended, pointing forward with the index finger. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, those monuments became a liability. I wanted one of them. I said that I would erect the statue in front of my house, position it so that his hand would point toward my home and would hang a large sign over his forearm. The sign would read: "For Shabbes lunch with us ---> this way." Needless to say we decided against it: I probably could have gotten a statue of V. Lenin on ebay for a few pennies, but the delivery would be way too expensive...
A while later my daughter was again going to Moscow for meetings, and she asked me the same question. This time I knew exactly what I wanted from Russia. I had been wanting them for years, those American toys of my childhood.
She went and came back. Without my toys. She did meet some of the relatives, but it didn't seem right to ask, she said. Well, I thought, surely such old pieces of plastic didn't exist anymore. How could they possibly survive all these years. It was plastic. Plastic melts... breaks easily... All gone, nothing to talk about.
Although here is a really good question, how come a girl growing up in Soviet Russia was in a possession of American toys?
You see. when I was born in Russia, my dad was working in the United States. You might have heard about it. How for several years after the WWII, the Russians were sending truly able and qualified professionals abroad to select the equipment under the lend-lease program offered by generous (but surely also wicked) capitalists. The lend-lease program was designed to help the Russians to rebuild their economy devastated by the WWII. Those able and qualified Soviet professionals didn't have to be ethnic Russians. Being the communist party member was not a requirement either. (All that was drastically changed thereafter)
Of course the able and qualified professionals were required to leave hostages in the Motherland, so Dad left his pregnant wife and disappeared in the West.
Some time later he learned by cable about my emergence from my mother and into the Motherland, and he was cabling back his utter happiness and delight.
Dad's letters were coming. And Mom was writing back. In one letter Dad proudly reported to Mom that he had bought a refrigerator and would be bringing it along. Mom's reply smartly indicated that she would be by far more interested in the content... Dad sold the refrigerator and intensified sending food packages whenever he had an opportunity.
Having completed his work, Dad returned to Mother Russia by the time of my second birthday. He brought a lot of raisins, chocolates, clothes, and TOYS.
Dad died when I was still a little girl, but a box with tiny plastic pieces of dollhouse furniture stayed with me throughout my growing up. Those were exquisite examples of what life could have been: a grand piano, a fireplace, table lamps, floor lamps, armchairs, sofas, dining room table, a buffet, a white kitchen, an art deco bathroom... five of six rooms to furnish. While we lived in one room, sharing the apartment --- one bathroom, small kitchen, and the hallway --- with other families. And who had ever heard about a grand piano or a fireplace in an apartment anyway? The toys stayed in the box. I would take them out when alone at home, arrange them on the floor this way or that, imagining French doors, tall windows, paintings on the walls... After all I was a well-read child... If someone set a foot into the room while I had my toys spread around between the bookcase and the dinner table, there would hardly be any place on the floor to place the other foot. So I always had to gather all pieces and place them back into the box, and return the box into the wardrobe where it was stored.
That dollhouse furniture was what my father brought for me from America.
As an adult with a child of my own, I used to have it on one of the bookshelves in a glass-front bookcase. Since I had never had a place for it as a child, I wanted it displayed and available for my daughter to play--- as soon as we got our own little studio condo.
When I emigrated I left it to Mother. When she emigrated she left it either to her sister or to one of her nieces. I had never seen it again.
How I wished I'd brought it along...
I had wanted it for such a long time,
thus my obsession with dollhouses
- the one my oldest daughter and i made out of cardboard boxes
- my middle child's Victorian Playmobile affluence
- my son's Little Tikes house augmented by a hand-made synagogue with
a tiny Torah scroll and little black fedoras on Little Tikes men...
So lately I questioned my assumption that the toys couldn't possibly survive. I ran image searches with keywords describing the toys, and, they started jumping out at me. They had still been around and so I decided to rebuild my own lost treasure, I searched the web systematically relying on my visual memory. I identified the manufacturer. I got a catalogue, and I have recreated Father's collection by betting on ebay and rejoicing each time when a little box arrived.
I hadn't had anything left from my father that was connected directly to me. I got a few of his gifts to Mother, but those were from him to her. I basically grew up without father. And little by little the memory of the toys that were his gifts to me has become more significant. These toys are truly FROM HIM TO ME. This is something tangible for me to have as I imagine my young father who hadn't even seen me yet roaming Woolworths and Montgomery Wards for these very new and popular toys.
As I held a newly arrived Art Deco bathtub, my fingers remembered holding it in a smaller hand. As I touched the black keys of the piano keyboard, I remembered that child's fascination with the fact that they indeed where positioned higher than the white keys. I remember the fingertip touch of the plastic imitation of embroidery on upholstered barrel armchairs.
What is striking is that my real furnishing preferences truly reflect
those childhood impressions: if I was remodelling a bathroom, it HAD TO BE a
pedestal sink, If I was buying a bookcase, it HAD TO BE of dark polished wood,
Most of what I own came from garage sales and estate sales and is close to the style of that period when Renwal was manufacturing the plastic thingies from their
pretty molds.