A Look Inside Doll City

The photo is grainy, the colors slightly blown out by a flash that caught us mid-laugh. There we are, our smiles so big they’re swallowing our eyes. It’s that uninhibited childhood joy.

My brother is in his Flash shirt. I am in silky Avon jammies, the kind that felt like luxury against the static of the carpet. We are cross-legged, action figures in hand, about to build a world.

To the right, the heavy, vinyl slope of a waterbed anchors the room. It was the early 90s; we hadn’t heard of computers yet, and cell phones were still science fiction. We had a modest, growing collection of VHS tapes, and if we were lucky, we watched one movie at night, the tracking lines flickering like a pulse across the screen.

“Screen time” wasn’t a phrase anyone knew to say. The architecture of a day was simple: you played inside, you played outside, and you ate meals in between.

On that carpet, we built Doll City. It was a boundless expanse of plastic and imagination where my brother’s action figures and my dolls were fellow citizens of the same universe. The rules were fluid because we said they were. A storyline could morph mid-sentence; a villain could switch sides for a snack break. A Barbie could survive any catastrophe.

My brother was five. I was two. He was older, faster, and naturally more plot-driven, but he bent himself to my pace anyway. It wasn’t a reluctant concession; it was a quiet, consistent kindness. Whenever I asked him to play, he showed up. For years, whenever I asked, he was there on the carpet with me.

I still have three of the original citizens: a pink Care Bear, a brown bear, and a white bear. In Doll City, they were the silent sentinels. They had protective roles: guards, companions, the ones who kept watch while the louder drama of Batman and Barbie unfolded around them.

They live in my closet now, tucked away but never quite retired. Last week, they came out again. A six-year-old lined them up in a row, her face set in a mask of professional concern. She pressed a plastic stethoscope to the pink bear’s chest and announced gravely that she was going to need surgery. The brown bear was called in for emotional support. The white bear was assigned to the waiting room.

Same bears. New hands. The world they’re asked to hold just keeps changing.

This is where the story actually begins. Here on this carpet, in those jammies, building a world out of nothing but imagination and a kind older brother who always said yes.

The joy was the foundation. Everything else came later.

This is where the memoir begins:

Doll City was the first world I built. My brother and I ruled it like sovereigns, our kingdoms sprawled across carpet and tile with the seriousness of monarchs. Barbie sat beside Batman, Polly Pocket plotted with GI Joe. Our dramas unfolded underwater in the bathtub or in outer space on the couch cushions.

Sometimes the city drowned. My brother held a Barbie face-down in the tub and announced, “The queen is dead.”

“No, she escaped,” I countered, hauling her out to circle the air. “She’s in her rocket.”

“She can’t breathe in space.”

“She has magic hair. It makes air.”

We played until one of us gave in or dinner was called. I never checked clocks; the story told me when it ended.

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