A Doll Story

Suze and Jenny 1980

Maya, Mandy and Jenny 2006

Playing with Dolls

If you look closely, you will see that the doll I am holding (top photo - Yes that's me when I was 5 ) and the doll Maya is holding (middle photo) are the same. They were part of the Fisher Price My Friend Doll Collection. I have Mandy, Jenny, Mickey and Becky. I also found the "new" Jenny when I was in college, and of course I bought her on the spot. I have held on to them all these years out of pure sentimentality. I, in general, am not a sentimental kind of person. I'm more the toss it if you're not using it kind of person, but these dolls have a very special story.

When I was about Maya's age, my mom was diagnosed with bone cancer. It was a large tumor, and it nearly killed her. For anyone who knows me, they know my mother is still alive and kicking, so obviously this story has a happy ending. Her recovery was long and hard, and she spent a lot of time in the hospital, and then even more time recovering at home. My brothers and I spent a lot of time with relatives and friends so that my Dad could work and visit my Mom at the hospital. One of these people was my Aunt Sibyl, a wonderful, wise woman who could do anything. She was also a fantastic seamstress.

Aunt Sibyl was a very good friend of my mother's and was deeply worried about her while she was sick. She told me much later (in my late twenties) that she felt very helpless and whenever she thought of my mom and didn't know what to do, she would sew me another outfit for my dolls. I didn't realize the enormity of what she had done for me as a child, until I began sewing doll clothes for my niece a few years ago. Each outfit is more time consuming and labor intensive than one for a full sized adult, and each piece takes hours to assemble from start to finish. Now when I look at the collection of clothes, well over 50 outfits, I realize that she spent hundreds of hours just to make a little girl feel better about her mom. And now the most wonderful part is, that I get to pass these on to my own daughter and tell her the story of how much I was loved and how much I love her.