Things

I didn't realize until yesterday that another passenger had returned with Mom from Kansas City: Carolina.

Oh, Carolina. Doll of my dreams. Desideratum of my 10-year-old self. There is certainly something mournful about receiving your heart's desire when your heart no longer cares. I'm not sure I can adequately express the heaven it would have been 30 years ago for her to be in my house. She was everything I loved: pretty, old-fashioned, genuinely old, and above all, a doll! As a child I longed for her so fiercely, I couldn't believe someone wouldn't do something about it. I never asked for her, though. Children really are impenetrably private about their deepest feelings.

Carolina's been through the wars. She's a German doll who was bought by my great-grandmother at a steep discount during World War I, when German things weren't selling. She belonged to my grandmother, whose hair was used to make her wig. Mom rescued her from her stepmother's purge of the first wife's possessions, and she landed at Aunt Virginia's house, where she's been for the last half century and more.

Now, Aunt Virginia's breaking up housekeeping & sending her lovely things on to the next set of temporary homes.The persistence of things, when their makers & owners are so transitory, is disconcerting. As William said of Dad's wine, it can feel like a phantom limb.

Made by dollmakers Simon & Halbig.