Nonfiction by Melanie Harless

As I search online for a Christmas doll for my five-year-old granddaughter, I am astounded at how things have changed since I was her age. There are so many choices. There are the baby dolls that don’t really do anything special and then there are the ones that, thanks to modern technology, seem almost alive. One giggles and plays peek-a-boo, another speaks two languages, and one even “eats” and “poops.” The most fantastic of all is a doll that engages in two-way communication, sees and hears, and expresses real emotions! Of course, I can always get one of those fashion-type dolls that look like miniature teenagers, but won’t that make her want to grow up too soon?

My mind drifts back to my first Christmas doll when I was about my granddaughter’s age. Santa Claus came to our house early on Christmas Eve while we were next door at my granny’s house for a Christmas Eve supper. When we got home, I could not believe all that Santa had brought me. There were lots of toys, but what caught my eye was the beautiful doll lying in a baby buggy. She was just what I had asked Santa to bring.

On Christmas night, I put my new doll down to sleep in her buggy and my family went back to Granny’s for Christmas dinner with all the relatives. Then chaos erupted. I never really knew for sure if the Christmas tree had caught fire or if something else caused our little house to go up in flames and burn to the ground taking my pretty doll with it.

I was upset about losing my new doll at first, but I guess I had not had it long enough to grow too attached. A few weeks late my mother made me a sock doll with blue button eyes, a red button nose, and a permanent red stitched smile on her face. It was not beautiful like my Christmas doll had been, but it was soft and huggable. I carried it everywhere and slept with it every night.

When I was six or seven, I received a Sweet Sue doll for Christmas with a complete layette that my mother had sat up late many nights sewing while the rest of the family slept. Sweet Sue, a 24-inch walking doll made of hard plastic, was the latest in doll technology at the time. She had beautiful blue eyes that opened and closed, long eyelashes, and curly auburn hair. As I held her hand, she walked beside me and turned her head from side to side.

I had never seen anything like her and played with her for many years, even after my brother knocked her head off a few months after Christmas. A metal post inside connected her head to her legs and after her head was knocked off she could no longer walk properly but the post kept her head on her neck in a cute tilt that looked as if she were looking up at me when she was sitting. It made it easier to dress her. I just lifted her head off!

For my ninth Christmas, my parents decided I should have a doll that wasn’t broken, and so I found under the tree a doll that took a bottle and wet. Along with it was a beautiful blue baby carriage. It was similar to the doll and carriage that had burned in the fire many years before. That same year, my new baby cousin was born right before Christmas and came to our house to stay while my aunt got her strength back. I had a real live baby to play with. I didn’t need dolls anymore.

I put the new doll and her carriage in my closet along with my broken Sweet Sue and the now raggedy sock doll. Occasionally, I took them out and played with them, trying to recapture feelings they had brought me, but only the beat-up old sock doll that my mother had made still made me smile.

After mulling over my doll history, I try again to choose a doll for my granddaughter. Would she be overwhelmed with a doll that can do almost everything or thrilled like I had been with that Sweet Sue walker? Would she rather have a baby doll with a carriage or a Barbie doll like so many little girls these days? Which doll would make her smile long after Christmas was over?

Then I knew the answer! I leave the online store and begin a new search—how to make a sock doll.

Melanie Harless began writing after retirement as a school librarian in 2006. She is an award-winning writer with poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography published in anthologies, journals, and magazines. She is a board member of Tennessee Mountain Writers and leads excursions for the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning.