Dolls Brought Her Back To Life
Don’t let the dolls waist-deep through Barbie Twardowski’s house fool you. There’s nothing perfumed or pampered about this Samuels, Idaho, woman who’s as skilled with a hunting rifle as she is with a sewing machine.
Still, there are those 700 dolls in gingham pinafores, sausage curls and patent leather Mary Janes.
“I’m heading into my girlie phase,” Barbie, 45, says and giggles to prove it.
She wanted no Chatty Cathys as a child, greatly disappointing her doll-loving mother, Shirley Dexter. As an adult, Barbie lived across the street from her mother, but rarely saw her.
Barbie was busy. One marriage after another went sour. She struggled to raise her son and daughter on a restaurant cook’s wages and hours.
Meanwhile, Shirley began collecting dolls. Eleven years ago, she invited Barbie to a doll show. Barbie was skeptical until she walked through the door.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “My mouth was wide open. I went to look, ended up buying, and my relationship with my mom blossomed.”
Olga, a $35 baby doll with platinum blond hair, was her first purchase. Barbie discovered her penchant for innocent-eyed baby dolls with chubby arms and legs, mile-long eyelashes and realistic mouths.
She wasn’t snobby about her purchases. She bought the dolls that struck her fancy - Cabbage Patch, My Buddy, Patty Play Pal. She found dolls from her childhood - Chatty Cathy, Barbie, Raggedy Ann.
Shirley bought dolls for Barbie and convinced her daughter in Idaho to join the Second Childhood Doll Club in Redmond, Ore., Shirley’s home. Mother and daughter traded photographs of their new babies and talked on the phone three times a week.
Barbie moved from restaurant cooking to debarking trees in a mill. After her long, dirty days, she returned home to lifelike baby dolls that kissed, cooed, and responded to a squeeze with a heartbeat.
She began ordering doll kits and assembling her own apple-cheeked darlings. She pierced their ears and dressed them in lacy socks and organdy dresses. Her father built her a tiny pine rocking chair.
Eventually, space became a problem in the double-wide mobile home she shares with her husband, Ron.
“I feel beat up,” he jokes, smiling at his wife. He’s a big guy in a tricornered hat who builds black-powder rifles as a hobby. “She lets me work on my toys. I let her do hers.”
Barbie moved hundreds of dolls into a trailer in the back yard, but babies still smile and pout all through her house. She manages the copy center for Staples in Sandpoint now. She calls it a girlie job because she’s clean at the end of the day.
In March, Barbie and Shirley took a pilgrimage to the Lee Middleton doll factory in Belpre, Ohio. Barbie recorded every moment of her first flight in a scrapbook and made a copy for her mother, who’s her best friend now.
“Getting into dolls changed my whole life,” Barbie says, cradling Jeanette Bell, the doll she bought in Ohio. “I don’t want to be tough anymore.”
Surprise party
Head up the scenic St. Joe this Sunday to St. Maries for “Betsy’s Birthday Bash.” Don’t know Betsy? Not a problem. It’s a dinner show put on by the traveling Vigilante Theatre Company, and it includes the audience.
Think Las Vegas, Sinatra and Martin, Mel Torme and Peggy Lee, then call 245-3417 to reserve seats. Tickets cost $10 for the 5:30 p.m. show and buffet dinner at the Elks Lodge, 628 Main.