Dolls they have such an interesting life......

Did you ever think about the life of a Doll?  Probably not I am not clueless.  I often think of things that matter not to most people.  I can remember my first dolls, they were my siblings.  I think I mostly remember the birth of my sister, Sister.  My mom had told us that we were getting a baby, she had thought that Red was going to be a sister but he was a surprise and came into this world not as a girl.  Family tradition had had it that the "Whites, my maiden name" didn't have more than two sons to a father, since my brother Silver had had a twin brother that had died no one thought Red would be a boy but he was, so they were thinking we would get a girl but all agreed only God would know, no, no sonograms back in those days don't you know.  You got what God sent you and you liked it!!  I digress,  Sister was to be my sissy, and she is and always has been.  I got her and did get to change her diapers at the age of three and a half.  I loved her and really had had no interest in dollyes before her, after all their counterparts or maybe they are just images of hmmmm? made lots of loud noises, you know babies.  I had gotten those at 14 months and 22 months, so I think maybe Sister was the first one I may have appreciated getting, after all the others just took away mom's attention. I do know I appreciated Sister because I wanted and got a baby doll of my own for my 4th birthday.  She was a black baby,  I soon after got a jointed Quipy baby, the boys tore her legs off and I cried and cried for her but Daddy could not make her go back together, she was much like a Humpty Dumpty.  I learned then that maybe real babies were better after all they didn't come apart and always like when you played with them.  They pulled hair, stunk to high heaven sometimes, but always were glad to see you and loved you for you.

I remember when Sister was really little she had a fuzzy little doll that she rolled fuzz balls off of, she rolled them incessantly in her fingers for hours on end.  She wore than one of those doll out and sometimes it was hard for Momma to find her a replacement which usually wasn't all the welcome when she first arrived.  Sister loved her babies much more than me, but I am not sure as a small child Sister was all that welcoming to the next child under her, she did like mom's undivided attention, and when Momma's Momma died Sister may have been the reason Momma got out of bed for a lot of years. Sister did help Momma want to go on, maybe in some ways the rest of us too, but not in a way you could tell like with Sister, and to a great extent Red.

Little Brother got a dolly when he was about 4 of 5, he got a regular Quipiy doll, I loved that doll and so wanted it that I would steal it from him.  It was not cuddly, or anything like that, but it was so cute to my 10 year old heart.  Mom made Sister a doll for Christmas that year that was handmade with the most beautiful embroidered face.  I think mom would have made me one but I love dolls in a way that I don't think mom ever understood.  I didn't carrying them around, I don't think I had the time, I had to be of help and playing with dolls wasn't on the list. Mom always called me a tom boy, but I am not sure I was ever really one in my secret heart, I was just bald and not ones idea of a girlie girl as a small child so maybe I just acclimated to what I was thought to be.  I am not sure Sister ever loved that doll like I did because she liked a different style doll.  I do so love hand made dolls, I made all of my sibling, my kids and my nieces and nephews one each one year in my twenties, I hadn't thought to make Little Brother one, after all he was 18, I didn't think we would want one but I ended up spending a good deal of the time from Christmas to New Years that year making him one, but I digress.  I made my Goofy a set of Raggedy Ann and Andy's for her second Christmas, she never liked them any more than the collection of dolls that I add a new one to every Christmas until, in my stupidity realized she never wanted them.  Some of them ones I had stitched special hand made clothes for, and once brained tan a deer hide for the leather to make the bride dress for a 1950's native american doll I had found with delight just for her.  Some kids just don't like dolls.

My Bug had a doll that we got him when he was two for his Christmas gift, he was a My Buddy doll and he was loved.  Bug did everything with him, the sun rose and set in that doll.  If Bug was in trouble I would just make Buddy sleep in my room for the night, it was a much more effective punishment than anything else when it came to disciplining Bug. Yogie had a doll when she was 4 that was a Dil doll, I don't even really know anything about it's character on some cartoom, someone gave us one used and Yogie loved that doll.  She was almost 5 when we moved into the house we live in now, she had had Dil playing with him and had forgotten him outside.  She remembered him just at bed time, she cried and cried, Poppie was outside with a flash light desperately trying to find Dil for her as nothing but Dil would do to console her.  She has since out grown Dil and has passed him on to her cousin who also, for some unknown reason loved him too, but she still wants a baby doll every year for Christmas, and she has a whole "crib" full of loved dolls.  She still will carry one around every once in awhile talking to it and caring for it like it has feelings and knows her every touch and whisper.

So why does one child love a doll and one not?  Why does one child have a whole mess of dolls with love wore into them, you know, no hair because the child combed it so much not one stranded is left, no not like when your brother cut Barbies hair off.  NO, like when a child can't live with out the comfort of holding a little clone of a really baby in it's arm with all the love that any mother ever mustard for her child.  They have ripe clothes and a lost sock, sometime pen marks or marker marks on them where some all important surgery had to be preformed to save their live, or stitches where mom had to stitch on a doll leg so that her child could go to sleep with her doll under her arm next to her little heart?  My mother always told me of the dolls she kept on her bed at night until she was in high school, they each had to be just so, Booboo does that too but rarely plays with even one of them. Yogies are loved to death and show the tatter and wear of years of play. My Mom tells a story of when she was 4 and had gotten a doll for Christmas.  Her dad was a disciplinarian you did what he said when he said it.  She was told to pick up her doll or he would burn it, she didn't and he did.  She still mourns that doll of her childhood.  So why does one child live for her doll and the other could live for ever without one?  Is is new to our culture or has it always been thus?  Does a child that loves her baby dolls make a better mother, or is he a better father? I know of old that some men wouldn't allow their sons to play with doll, they didn't want them to be sissy's.  Could it be that it would have made them more loving daddy's?  I so wonder on the questions and answers of dolls.....I know that there is nothing sadder than a pristine doll on a shelf to me.  A doll is made to be loved, played with and treasured.  Even if only a little.....

 I pray that you know that the Lord God loves you, yes, you, he sent his one and only son to die on a cross just for you.  You are the lost sheep that he seeks and he will leave all his other sheep to look for you.  He loves you.  Did you know that is one of the hardest things for a person to wrap their heads around that a God or Deity so supreme would take the time to love me.  Yes, me, and you, one pathetic insignificant human being among all of the billions of others now, and in the past, he loves me because I am me.  God loves you and wants, and waits for you to come to him, do it today, tomorrow may not come and you may not get another chance to accept God's love.... tomorrow.