My uncle Allyn started it.  He was quite a bit younger than my mother, and when he traveled the world in the Navy, he started sending dolls to his three nieces—us. Often they would arrive in sets of three, one for each of us, or occasionally one special doll, like the big Dutch boy and girl couple with wooden shoes and movable limbs we would have to figure out how to share.  Each doll was dressed in the traditional country costume from India, Ceylon, Portugal or Hong Kong.

I found myself being seduced by hand-crafted dolls from different lands over the years, finding serendipitous treasures in flea markets, souvenir shops, street vendors, and craft markets.

Allyn drifted on, but as my parents took jobs overseas and traveled, we started accumulating dolls from Vietnam, Thailand, Austria. There was a fabulous one from the Philippines with a long swirling skirt that my older sister got as a reward when she had to go to Clark Air Base for a health issue.

As we girls got older and left home, we divvied up the dolls and carted them around or stored them in shoe boxes, wrapped in tissue paper, largely forgotten along with other childhood memorabilia.

In 1987, I was part of a health workers trip to Nicaragua, then embroiled in the Contra war against the Sandinistas.  Times were tough, and we passed by someone on the side of the road trying to sell a couple of dolls they had made for what seemed like a lot of money then—twenty dollars each.  They were the Viejo and the Viejita—traditional caricatures of old Spanish people, dressed in fancy dress with a cane and a basket, faces painted like masks. I was impressed and forked over my bills, carefully shepherding the folk art through the trip back to Oakland.

I never thought of myself as a doll person, but I found myself being seduced by hand-crafted dolls from different lands over the years, finding serendipitous treasures in flea markets, souvenir shops, street vendors, and craft markets.  I wouldn’t set out looking for another doll, but they would appear and have a beguiling expression or lovingly made costume I couldn’t resist.

At some point I got an etagere and the old dolls escaped their tissue paper storage to join newer ones on display in ever more crowded shelves. We never really talked about it, so I had to laugh  when I went to visit my sisters and discovered they each had etageres stuffed with international dolls they too had accumulated over the years.  Who knows what will become of all this bounty, but I think we each appreciate the memories the collections hold while we can.

There have been other things that have somehow turned into casual collections as well—unusual coins, pocket knives, pictures of all types, stories and drawings, rocks, eclipse posters, T shirts and hats, scarves, books, maps. Channeling uncle Allyn, I have also gotten into the habit of bringing back a stuffed toy for our dog whenever we travel—and he seems to expect that treat.  Joaquin is a good boy, and carries them around carefully, herding them, nuzzling them, sleeping with them. There is now a true embarrassment of animals of every type, from woolly mammoth to bat to antelope to a variety of bears and on and on. Every day I pick them up and put them into a box and he roots around to find the ones he wants and scatters them about. To tell the truth, I think I enjoy his “doll collection” as least as much as he does.