Friday, July 20, 2012

i am a girl


I am a girl. I know this is true because my little granddaughter told me and children are very wise.
Girls often love dolls and I am no exception.
In fact, the very first doll I have a clear memory of belonged to my mother.

My great grandmother Minerva was an artistic and resourceful woman, a mother of ten children.
She crafted dolls for my mother and her two little sisters out of wood, and wool, cotton and leather.
These wooden dolls didn't grow up and leave home like the little girls they were made for.
They stayed at home to keep my grandmother company.
Time passed and a new generation of little girls climbed the wide cedar stairs to my grandmother's log house and sat on her braided rug surrounded by handcrafted toys.
My mother's wooden doll was dressed in red velveteen with tights made from an old pair of stockings. Her little lace up shoes were fashioned from leather. Hand tatted lace adorned her neckline and sleeve. These details were lost on me, but I do remember her golden hair, burnished cedar, and her welcoming wooden hands, her steady, reassuring smile.
These were a ruse as it turned out.
Clasping her about the middle and lifting her always resulted in a solid meeting of foreheads.
The thunk would be followed by indignant tears.
"She's not very friendly is she," my grandmother would soothe.
I grew wary and wise, or perhaps childhood affection won the doll over at last.
That old doll and I had many happy afternoons together before I was caught in the fast moving stream of time and swept away into teenage years and beyond.
Decades marched swiftly by and my mother lives with me now, she and her dollie. My own daughters are children of yesterday, and at last, my own grandchildren climb my stair........


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