Tender Wooden Hands
To meet her there, holding those wooden hands, seeing hers move about these tiny, almost-people is the only perspective.
Watching her play, at 18 months old, I see tiny, chaotic, busy little hands. Rushed and grasping, made to slow. Small explorations of three-line faces, scraps of cloth for clothes, whorls of wool are hair. Oversized feet, comical.
I am invited to play. Large hands forced to tenderness as tiny dramas are played out on the floor. I am lowered to their world, ignoring the dust balls beneath the sofa.
The stories don’t change much.
This is Nana
This is Mummy
Baby!
Mummy kisses baby
Daddy
Faces and hands sharpened by their closeness to the eye. The rest reduced to a smudge. Lives lived in bokeh. Only us and ourselves in miniature.
We, the real, non-wooden parents, are told we must choose toys that present opportunities for the imagination. Allowing her space to play, not to play for her.
They must be simple. Natural materials. Educational or creative, preferably both. Definitely beautiful. Not the noise and brash colours of plastic. We do our duty and surround her with a carefully curated selection of items.
Even so, insinuations and biases creep beneath the nursery door.
There is a Mummy
There is a Daddy
There is a Baby
A nuclear family in a wooden world. We fall short of our own ideals.
At the same time, in these dolls, there is an essential unwoodness. To allow the poses, the play. Wire and wood and wool. Paint and polish. Hints of life.
Given a choice, would she still choose these simple, unfussy shapes or the bright, loud and flashy (flashing) alternatives? Do we want to risk that experiment if we already know the result?
So, if not wholly for her, then for us. An aversion to ruining our aesthetic, our own curated life. No trashy toys. We’re not trashy parents. Our child will not be trash. These toys must represent value and judgement and calm, and reflection. None of which is borne out by her hectic, shouting rejection of constraint, of quiet. She’s wilder than any toy.
We look to the beatific smiling faces of these tiny wooden people for reassurance and know with certainty that we’re Doing The Right Thing.
So then, play with little direction or instruction. No rulebook, just a loose string of known values. Simple faces and abstract forms, resolved through intuition. Intrinsic and exploratory. We play at feeding, caring, protecting, holding, moulding.