Who said you can’t bring your fullest self into the care partner relationship? What’s stopping you?
My obsession with history and my curiosity about others was ingrained into my DNA and part of my interests long before I picked up my first American Girl Doll. For many of us, the toys we play with and the things we watch form us and our interests from an early age. For me, it was not the toys or movies so much as it was the books my mom purchased for me and the stories she read out loud.
When I was in 1st grade, Mom purchased for me all of the Meet Samatha books from the American Girl Collection, and my obsession with historical fiction began. I went on to read all the books that went along with the first five dolls, Felicity, Kirstin, Addy, Samantha, and Molly. I devoured these books, and up until I went off to college, they continued to hold pride of place on my bookshelf, a constant small reminder of where it all began. American Girl is not the same today as it was back in the 1990s, but Pleasant Rowland’s creation formed me as a young girl as much as the work and imagination of Francis Hodgson Burnett, Kay Thompson, and many, MANY others!
My love of history, people, and historical fiction grew as I got older and evolved with me. But it all started with American Girl. Who knew that a book series with corresponding dolls could hold so much for such a small girl. When I started collecting the dolls, accessories, and books, American Girl was not the status symbol it has become today. One would pick a doll based on the story they wanted to live in, not as a way to compete with another girl at school. Some classmates only had the books, and some classmates had all five dolls. We shared with each other, and we talked about the books and the places we would go in our imagination as we entered the various time periods. Great adventures and quiet moments were sparked by each book and the play we entered into with our dolls. Living in Wisconsin meant our moms could go down to Middleton to the warehouse sale where they would pick up accessories, patterns, and fabric to expand our collection at a lower cost than that of the catalog price. Roxanne’s Doll shop downtown allowed us to enter even more worlds as we uncovered different time periods not addressed by Pleasant Company. The world of American Girl knew no limits and made up most of my childhood.