The Enchantment of Raggedy Ann
The prompt that made me remember.
Before I get started, a big shout-out to Tara Penry for thinking up a truly genius idea: Let’s talk about books that enchanted us! Let’s make it a contest! (Thanks, Tara, for the mention, and for those of you reading this, you should try it!)
I almost never gravitate to prompts of any kind. I can usually come up with enough ideas that I don’t have to grab someone else’s, but she had me at ‘Enchanted’.
I love the word ‘enchant’ in all its forms: enchanted, enchanting, enchantment. I live to find those things that enchant me, even at such an age that I should put away those childish things and concentrate instead on how rapidly my body is falling apart and how soon my brain will follow.
I probably could have chosen any one of a number of books—Black Beauty, Charlotte’s Web, Gift from the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Princess Bride, Harry Potter—but I didn’t. I chose Raggedy Ann because, inside and outside of those books, those dolls came alive for me.
Literally.
Every night, in the middle of the night, they waited until things were quiet and then they began to move. And talk. Through those books I learned about the whole Raggedy clan and grew to love them. And, of course, I tried to stay awake at night so I could join in on their adventures.
Raggedy Ann was the leader of the dolls, wise and kind and always finding herself in trouble. She was catapulted into the air and landed in a tree where she lay for hours until somebody finally found her. She fell into the river and had to be wrung out with a hand wringer and then hung on the clothesline to dry. She got dragged through the mud a couple of times, and once a dog ripped her beautiful orange yarn hair right out of her head.
She sacrificed her own comforts in order to make someone else happier and it was expected of her because she was wise and kind and a true leader. And she had a candy heart. “Raggedy will fix it”, the other dolls said. And through it all Raggedy philosophized and forgave and never stopped smiling. (Yes, I did become a people-pleaser. How did you know?)
I was nine years old, and we were living in the first of only two houses my parents would ever buy. It had two bedrooms and an unfinished dormer attic. I was an only child at the time—my brother came along later—so I had my own room. It was pink, there were two windows, and it held my bed, my dresser, my bookcase, and a cradle for my dolls.
My bride doll had a little chair of her own, but my baby dolls slept in the cradle underneath Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. They were the two I needed to keep an eye on, because they were the ones I knew would come alive as soon as I fell asleep.
So I know you’re thinking, yeah, well, Toy Story…
Except Johnny Gruelle got there first. The original Raggedy books—the ones I was reading—were written and illustrated before I was born. Johnny Gruelle died in January, 1938, five months after I came along, but by the time I could read them, the Raggedy books had already sold in the millions.
It was Johnny’s idea to manufacture rag dolls to go along with the stories, and what a genius idea it was. How else could they come alive in my room at night after I fell asleep?
World War II had finally come to an end after a grueling five years, and in 1946 we Americans were coming up for air. Hope was all around us. So was grief. Slowly we were leaving fear behind and we were moving on. I couldn’t have processed that as a kid, but I sense that my mother encouraged me to go on being that enchanted child because war should never have been a little girl’s fear—and it was.
I had grown timid and scared and came to believe the war would inevitably come to us. Planes diving low and dropping propaganda pamphlets terrified me. Air raid blackouts made me shiver. The rumor that the people across the street—German-speaking—might be spies scared the daylights out of me. Later, whenever I heard a loud noise outside, I was sure it was an Atomic Bomb.
My mom knew I needed my imagination to take me to kinder, gentler places. Enchanting places. The Raggedy books did that.
To read more about the contest and to vote for my entry, click on the link and then scroll through the comments until you get to mine and hit that little heart until it turns red. Thanks!
I never had the books, but I had the dolls!
Thanks, I needed that! Lovely!