Nostalgia for Babies in the Aisles of Toyland

It’s a ritual as familiar to me as baking holiday cookies, stringing lights along the eaves, shopping for the perfect Christmas tree. With two weeks to go until Christmas, I am cruising the aisles at my local Toys R Us, looking for the toys that Santa will bring.

Reflexively, I wind through the rows--board games, baby dolls, Barbie gear. But when I emerge, my basket is empty. Magic Megan, Makeup Mindy, My Dream Baby . . . none of this looks familiar to me.

I feel lost, bewildered, disoriented. Suddenly it dawns on me: There is no longer anyone at home clamoring for Barbie clothes or Beanie Babies or a doll that sneezes and talks and sings. My daughters--at 10, 12 and 15--have grown beyond my toy store forays.

It is inevitable, I guess, that we miss the signs of our children’s maturation. One day you’re tying a toddler’s sneakers, the next day she’s gliding downstairs in heels. One Christmas, your cart is loaded with tea sets and Tonka toys; the next you’re searching for nail polish and CDs.

Still, I never would have thought that the aisle of a toy store--a place that has been my nemesis as often as my salvation--would be the site of my epiphany.

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When the kids were tiny, it was a simple routine. Their dad would stay home and put them to bed, and I would dash out on Christmas Eve and fill the cart with doll houses, toy cars, wooden puzzles . . . generic toys for children too young to make lists dictated by TV commercials.

Then we’d stay up late into the night, assembling baby gyms and rocking horses, while we drank eggnog in front of the fire and listened to the Isley Brothers and Gladys Knight sing Christmas carols.

Over the years, it got more complicated. Yet for all we complained about missing pieces and badly written assembly instructions, there was something sweet about those late-night labors of love. Something I’ll be missing this Christmas Eve, as I wrap jewelry boxes, diaries, ‘N Sync posters, CD players . . . the things that are on their shopping lists these days.

I suppose I should be celebrating. No more frantic searches for Furbys or Elmos. No more standing in chilly early-morning lines with a hundred other mothers who’ve snuck out and left sleeping children at home. No more pawing through piles of Barbie’s boyfriends for the lone brown Ken someone’s tossed aside.

So why do I feel this sense of loss as I head for the exit, passing women I used to be: the mother begging a busy clerk to please, please, check the back for one overlooked “Baby I Know.” The lady paying for her purchase with Geoffrey dollars--store currency from last year’s gift-choices-gone-wrong. The mom rehearsing for a stranger in the checkout line the speech she’ll give her son on Christmas morning, when he opens the science kit that will break his heart: “No Pokemon cards this year. It’s time you develop some other interests.”

They inhabit a world I have left behind . . . one I now find hard to imagine letting go. Why, I wonder, do I feel heartsick at the thought of bidding goodbye to a ritual I have never loved? Perhaps because these shopping trips have been not just a way to fulfill my children’s Christmas wishes, but also a chance to impose my childhood on their own, to connect with my own memories of a youth long gone. That is why, tucked away in our closet, is an Easy-Bake Oven, a game of Chutes and Ladders, a set of molds for Creepy Crawlers--toys I bought not because my girls asked for them, but because my sisters and I had once enjoyed them.

And, too late, I realize that this annual shopping trip has in some ways been an antidote for all those moments when I’ve wished my girls would grow up faster, when I’ve felt hemmed in by their needs, squeezed by the demands that little children bring. I will miss the pleasure of watching tiny hands dress a baby doll or serve an imaginary pot of tea.

And as I make my last pass through an aisle lined with dolls, I wonder if 10 is really too old to cuddle a make-believe baby. Impulsively I grab a box and head for the checkout counter. Inside is a baby doll, with a beanbag body; big, glass eyes that open and close; a head full of curly, black hair.

She doesn’t talk or sing or come with any accessories. But the price is right and the pull is strong. And I can’t honestly say, as the cashier hands back my change, whether this toy will be my daughter’s or mine.