The Christmas dolls

Last evening Ken was looking through a Target flyer, ogling the toy cars and trucks and wishing he'd had some of those toys when he was a small boy.

That got me to thinking about Christmases of my childhood, especially the Christmas Roberta and I got our dolls.

Roberta and I are the youngest of six. Our older siblings are from 12 to 18 years older than I, and Roberta is almost two years older than I.

On Christmas morning we never found our tree over-laden with gifts, as some did then and many do today. We always had a Christmas, though, and we cherished the gifts we received from Santa.

I clearly remember the day, a week or two before Christmas, when Mum or our older sister Shirley sent Roberta to the upstairs closet to get something. Roberta returned with the item, and her eyes were as large as dinner plates.

I knew something was up. Roberta and I sneaked to a quiet spot where Roberta confessed to me, "There are two dolls hidden in the back of the closet."

Wow! We were about five and six-and-a-half at the time, and the thought of those dolls, hiding in the closet, beautiful dolls that just might be for us, was about all I could handle.

Christmas morning finally came, and sure enough, two beautiful dolls sat under the tree. My doll had blonde hair; Roberta's had brown hair. They were elegantly dressed, complete with tiny shoes, and they were ours.

As I look at photos of that Christmas morning, I see Roberta and I are wearing our Korean silk embroidered pajamas. One of our brothers, Eldon, was stationed in Korea, for this was during the Korean War, and Eldon had sent home to his family various Korean gifts. For his sisters, he sent beautiful pajamas. I remember my mother got a silk bed jacket and my father received a silk smoking jacket.

So this was, indeed, an exciting Christmas for Roberta and me.

I didn't realize until just this year that it was Shirley, our older sister, who'd given the dolls to us.

Perhaps I should have realized it was Shirley, because she was always so good to her two little sisters. She watched out for us and often gave us what we might not have had otherwise. It was she who brought home to us one summer day brand new bathing suits! I remember Roberta and I put on our bathing suits immediately and sashayed around the kitchen in them, feeling like princesses.
It was Shirley who became my rock when I was a teenager and life was not as happy as I wanted it to be. She was always supportive of me, encouraging to me, even though she was now a busy mother herself and giving endless love to her children.

The year we got our Christmas dolls will always be a favorite memory of mine. I still have my doll, although time has not been kind to her.

What I need to do is send her to a doll hospital and have her brought back to the beauty she had that Christmas morning so long ago.