i reread my nostalgia post recently and felt like crying my eyes out. instead, i opened up ebay.
the sight of old, beloved toys reminded me of something that's been plaguing me for years. a lost figurine - maybe a toy or action figure - of ariel, from Disney's the little mermaid.
the more i looked, the more i felt the knot welling up in my throat. i couldn't find her. none of these figurines were her. too shiny, too matte, too new, too expensive. the more i tried to find her the less i could remember her. it was like i was a little girl again trying to explain to my mom what i'd lost and her showing me pictures and me going "no, no, no" to each one. the sensation is so horribly familiar. the begging to be understood, the not knowing if anyone did, except that now it was like trying to help my own daughter. with every rejected mermaid i felt a deep childlike sadness that i couldn't hold back. with every prompt searched i felt a deep adult sadness that i didn't know what to do with.
i suppose i should give more context about why i'm crying over a piece of plastic.
when i was a young girl, my older sister had a friend who's house we went to visit. i actually don't remember why i was there? i have the impression that i was just tagging along while she did homework or something, as was wont to happen with me being the youngest of three to a single mom. i'm wracking my brain trying to recall what age i was. i must have been in elementary school and my sister by consequence in middle school, at least. at some point we went to her classmate's room. there was a wall of toys and figurines. that was where i spotted her.
Ariel captivated me. she was so beautiful, light gently bouncing off her matte PVC green tail. i was OBSESSED with Ariel at that age. our bedroom was decorated with Ariel sheets - our bathrooms had small porcelain fish sculptures - we watched and rewatched the VHS.
i don't remember who it was that said i could take it, i think it was her friend or her friend's dad. somebody male said i could have it.
i only remember flashes of the house we went to (for some reason i envision it stuck directly into the side of a mountain?) and i don't have recollection of anyone's face. it's possible i'm even misremembering the name of my sister's friend. but i remember the joy of that moment and what Ariel felt like in my hands. i remember her smile and well painted eyes, the slanted stone that she sat on gray and peppered with seaweed and shells. i'm almost certain flounder was attached to the stone somehow. might have been sebastian.
i loved that dang figurine. i turned her over and over in my hands. the craftsmanship! the honor! this must certainly be an expensive piece, and this nice boy just gave it to me. wow! so cool!!!!
i was ecstatic. she was mine!
i remember the day i lost her.
it had either been raining or was still actively raining on that foggy afternoon. again this was when i was a little girl and the front yard hadn't yet been paved over (no category 5 hurricane had made that a necessity yet). i'd taken my little mermaid and went to the front yard near where mom parked her car, because there were puddles there. i stooped down with the water up to my ankles, clear where it pooled around grass leaves until it grew murky with my stirring. i was playing with her there. it was water, and mermaids go in water. i used her tail and the stone base to dig up mud and watch it swirl in pretty spirals. i'd dunk ariel, get her dirty, then dunk her again and gently clean off the stuck-on mud with my little fingers. she was so new and textured and fascinating and i loved her.
i lost her there, in the ankle deep water. to this day i don't know what happened. all i know is one moment i had her and the next she was gone, and if i told my mom, she would ask me why for the love of god i had taken the shiny toy my sister's friend generously gave to me and stuck in the dirt. and i don't know why. i was just a kid. i don't know if i told mom. oh, but how i cried for Ariel.
for years afterwards every time we (and then i, when i got my license) drove up the hill to the garage, i'd look to my left and see that specific patch of land where i'd lost Ariel.
i looked, of course. dug into mud and forked my hands through the damp grass. but i never saw her again.
it's been over 30 years since disney's the little mermaid exploded into the pop culture zeitgeist. ebay has thousands of Ariels. plastic, ceramic, pvc, you name it. and i just can't find her. it's making my tears angry. "no, that CAN'T be her, she was WELL PAINTED and had NO MOVEABLE PARTS, and she was SITTING, on a STONE. and there was SOMETHING ALIVE beside her. i REMEMBER the sensation of her pointy tail, unstuck from the stone, when i pressed it into the pad of my thumb. i REMEMBER the sculpting of her hair. I REMEMBER."
so why does it feel like with every scroll someone is insisting that i'm lying?
i'm not lying. i didn't forget her. please believe me.
it was not until i started writing this blog post that it occurred to me, "hey, maybe someone who worked the yard found her. maybe the people who poured concrete over that land found her."
i doubt it. if they had, mom would tell me. i would have seen ariel on a shelf, in our basement, in her classroom. hell, maybe she gave it to a disney-loving aunt.
i know the truth. i know she's still right there where i left her, buried under concrete and soil. but i can't help still searching. and with every search i make, i feel that same despair i did the first time.
how could i lose her? how can i find her? where is she?
where is she?
it's been about a week since i started writing this post. i think i'm close to finding her. each ebay search has tested my memory, but finally i think i'm closing in.
the ariel i remember is as follows:
she's sitting upright, with her tail curving in front of her, on a gray stone base. the stone has some kind of decoration around it, seaweed or stars, and for whatever reason i keep remembering flounder attached to it as well but it may be a false memory. i only remember ariel.
the craftmanship is lovely, so much so that now as i'm typing this it occurs to me that it would have been strange for a young geek to give away a nice disney action figure to some snot nosed kid. ebay's algorhythm suggests that i might actually be looking for a cake topper or cheap fast food toy. my memory insists this must be wrong because i swear to you, the figure i was given was actually quite nice! the paintwork was nice, the sculpting was well made - this wasn't some burger king toy with splotched on printed paint! but there are nice looking cake toppers, so i think i'm onto something.
here are some of the objects that approximate my memory. sources are linked in the captions.
this is the closest to what i remember. i think this might actually be her. i say "might" because for the life of me i can't find the year this came out in. it's hard to date any of these figures, really.
this is the point in my writing that i kinda sat back and realized, man, i've spent a lot of time thinking about this. why? when i first started writing this, i was actually quite sad. i kept scrolling and scrolling, melancholic. then, when i thought i was actually getting somewhere, i felt determined. i think i got a second wind because i purchased another well-loved toy of my childhood.
remember those Commonwealth unicorns i mentioned in my other blog post? yeah - i got one on etsy!! it came after weeks of looking longily at my screen, on ebay and etsy and poshmark, until someone put it up for a non-exorbitant amount. and it was one of the two we actually had, too!!! so i got it! it smelled like incense, like the previous owner's home. i washed it just to liven up the little guy's fur, and a little bit of the smell remains. but it's not bad. it's kind of comforting.
maybe that was why i kept looking for Ariel. maybe, if i tried hard enough, i could find her, too. i've already found many of my childhood toys on ebay and etsy. there's a pokemon chansie rev-top that i've been thinking about for legit months now. but i haven't gotten it - i have big girl money but also big girl bills now, and have to be judicious. the fact i paid over $50 for a plushie purely out of nostalgia is already enough of a selfish purchase without putting me in jeopardy.
is it selfish though? certainly a little self-serving, maybe. i'm not 8 years old anymore and i haven't been for a very long time. (thank god.) but is it so bad to want a little bit of that comfort again? you can never get your childhood back and you can never experience life all over again, of course not. but is it so wrong to want to know if your memory is as accurate? to have reassurance that things really were as vibrant and textured as you remember?
i sleep with my unicorn now. i used to sleep with puniko, but i realized i was getting him pretty dirty, so i washed him and stopped. cuddling with a vintage toy - sequins worn and sanded with time - feels good. feels nice. it's meant to get dirty from love, you know? same as puniko i guess. but i think the fact puniko is merch of my oshi and also made of memory foam stresses me out LMAO
last week i caught myself about to fall into another obsessive search, not with Ariel, but with another plush. an old bear we used to call Camila. still can't find her, but i think it's fine if i don't. god knows i shouldn't try looking up a vintage teddy bear and expecting immediate results!
maybe it's the search that's fun, now. it is nice to see well-designed toys still get love decades after they came out. and hey, it feels good to sleuth out a good find! it's like solving a puzzle but the reward is a piece of plastic or fabric or plush that you give meaning to. human psychology is kinda weird. that's why i went to college for it, he he
i'm not sure how to end this. re-reading this now it's kind of all over the place but there's comfort in seeing the sadness at the start turn to laughter at the end. i think it's okay if i misremember what Ariel looked like. i think it's okay if my memories blurred together after all. if i find her it'll be really cool! but if i end up getting a pretty figure that wasn't her, that's also okay. if i don't get anything at all, it's okay. sometimes i have to over-reassure myself about this kind of thing. i guess there are parts of me that never really grow up. they don't go away - i just learn to parent them.
i'll be cuddling my unicorn really close tonight. if anyone at all in the world has read this far, hey, thanks for tolerating my ranting BAHAHA and if you know what the heck figurine i'm talking about, PLEASE tell me at pepsirosiemail@proton.me! thanks again for reading!