My first “Barbie” / Moje prvni “Barbie”

When I was a little girl I loved dolls (what a surprise, right?). I loved them so much that every time my dad was leaving for work I would ask him to bring me one. Well, one of those days has become a memory for the rest of my life.

It was summertime and I was vacationing with my family at our cottage. Since our parents didn’t have as much time off as us, kids, my dear grandma Kaja would baby-sit us during that time. This grandma became one of my most influential people in my life. She survived both wars, raised 2 kids during W.W.II and feverishly taught French for most of her life. She also believed in a true and pure communism (nowadays we call it Utopia). Anyhow, since grandma Kaja endured through the war times she has always had the survival-of-the-fittest attitude and therefore learned to be VERY frugal and VERY resourceful. Let me just give you an example (and I am sure some of you may relate as their grandmas did similar things):

1. She would never throw away milk bags (during communism milk was sold in plastic bags) to use them later for other purposes such as a storage for her rubber bands.

2. She would never through any food away. Everything she cooked (and she was a great cook) was made out of scratch. At the end of the week she served the “mystery meal” which was all of the leftovers from that particular week combined.

3. She would shop at 20 different grocery stores the whole morning just to get the cheapest butter.

4. She saved all of her cardboard to re-use it as a notepad

5. She would show me exactly how much toilet paper can I use at a time (and believe me, it wasn’t much).

She would also get up every morning at 4 am and baked kolace. And to sum it all up grandma Kaja was the best fairytale teller. She was just the perfect grandma…well, almost perfect as you find out below…

Anyhow, as my father was leaving for work on one summer morning I asked him, as usual, to bring me a doll. Grandma Kaja (his mother) heard me and said: “No, no, you don’t need a new doll honey, we will make one so that your father doesn’t need to spend any more money.” I weakly protested but went along with it. Mind you, I was no more than 5 years old so I didn’t have any internal monitor to tell me that something was going wrong with this plan. My grandma orders were as follows:

1. Go down to the firewood pile and find yourself a nice fat log
2. Draw a face on it
3. Stuff it in one of your old socks
4. And you have a wonderful doll!!!

After I finished my art project, tenderly rocking my new “Barbie” in my arms, grandma said: “See, isn’t she beautiful?” And to me she was (or was it him? Believe me, there was no way of knowing just by looking at that thing). Grandma Karla suggested to put the doll in my toy umbrella-stroller and go show her off in the village. “OK!” I squealed in delight – and my destiny was sealed. As I cruised those streets, showing of my “Golem”, I could not help overseeing these funny faces that people made when they saw us (Barbie and I). All the village kids were giggling and whispering something into each others ears. No one really came up and said: “gee, that is a wonderful doll you have, can you show me how to make one just like that?” As the years went by and I would think of that experience I finally realized the reality: I had made a complete fool of myself!