Kay Cordell Whitaker
A Doll for Great-Grandmother
When my grandfather died, my 83-year-old grandmother, once so full of life, slowly began to fade. No longer able to manage a home of her own, she moved in with my mother, where she was visited often by other members of her large, loving family (two children, eight grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and two great–great-grandchildren). Although she still had her good days, it was often hard to arouse her interest.
But one chilly December afternoon three years ago, my daughter Meagan, then eight, and I were settling in for a long visit with “GG,” as the family calls her, when she noticed that Meagan was carrying her favorite doll.
“I, too, had a special doll when I was a little girl,” she told a wide-eyed Meagan. “I got it one Christmas when I was about your age. I lived in an old farmhouse in Maine, with Mom, Dad and my four sisters, and the very first gift I opened that Christmas was the most beautiful doll you’d ever want to see.
“She had an exquisite, hand-painted porcelain face, and her long brown hair was pulled back with a big pink bow. Her eyes were blue as blue could be, and they opened and closed. I remember she had a body of kidskin, and her arms and legs bent at the joints.”
GG’s voice dropped low, taking on an almost reverent tone. “My doll was dressed in a dainty pink gown, trimmed with fine lace. But what I especially remember was her petticoat. It was fine batiste, trimmed with rows and rows of delicate lace. And the tiny buttons on her boots were real.... Getting such a fine doll was like a miracle for a little farm girl like me—my parents must have had to sacrifice so much to afford it. But how happy I was that morning!”
GG’s eyes filled and her voice shook with emotion as she recalled that Christmas of long ago. “I played with my doll all morning long. She was such a beautiful doll.... And then it happened. My mother called us to the dining room for Christmas dinner and I laid my new doll down, ever so gently, on the hall table. But as I went to join the family at the table, I heard a loud crash.
“I hardly had to turn around—I knew it was my precious doll. I just knew it. And it was. Her lace petticoat had hung down from the table just enough for my baby sister to reach up and pull on it. When I ran in from the dining room, there lay my beautiful doll on the floor, her face smashed into a dozen pieces. I can still see my mother trying to put my poor dolly together again. But it couldn’t be done. She was gone forever.”
A few years later, GG’s baby sister was also gone, she told Meagan, a victim of pneumonia. Now the tears in her eyes spilled over—tears, I knew, not only for a lost doll and a lost sister, but for a lost time.
Subdued for the rest of the visit, Meagan was no sooner in the car going home than she exclaimed, “Mom, I have a great idea! Let’s get GG a new doll for Christmas, one exactly like the doll that got broken. Then she won’t cry when she thinks about it.”
My heart filled with pride as I listened to my compassionate little daughter. But where would we find a doll to match GG’s fond memories?
Where there’s a will, as they say, there’s a way. When I told my best friends, Liz and Chris, about my problem, Liz put me in touch with a local doll maker who made doll heads, hands and feet of a ceramic that closely resembled the old porcelain ones. From her I commissioned a doll head in the style of three-quarters of a century ago—making sure to specify “big blue eyes that opened and closed,” and hands and feet. From a doll supply house I ordered a long brown wig and a kidskin body, and Meagan and I shopped for fabric, lace and ribbon to duplicate the outfit GG had so lovingly described. Liz, who had some experience with a hot-glue gun, volunteered to put the doll together, and as the last days before Christmas raced by, Chris helped me make the doll’s outfit, complete with lacy petticoat. And while Liz, Chris and I searched for doll “boots with real buttons,” Meagan wrote and illustrated the story of the lost doll.
Finally, our creation was finished. To our eyes it was perfect. But, of course, there was no way it could be exactly like the doll GG had loved so much and lost. Would she think it looked anything like it?
On Christmas Eve, Meagan and I carried our gaily wrapped gift to GG, where she sat surrounded by children, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. “It’s for you,” Meagan said, “but first you have to read the story that goes with it.”
“Read it out loud,” one of the other children demanded. GG no sooner got through the first page than her voice cracked and she was unable to go on, but Meagan took over where she left off. Then it was time to open her present.
I’ll never forget the look on GG’s face as she lifted the doll and held it to her chest. Once again her tears fell, but this time they were tears of joy. Cradling the doll in her frail arms, she repeated over and over again, “She’s exactly like my old doll, exactly like her.”
And perhaps she wasn’t saying that just to be kind. Perhaps however impossible it seemed, we had managed to produce a close facsimile of the doll she remembered. But as I watched my eight-year-old daughter and her great-grandmother examining the doll together, I thought of a likelier explanation. What GG really recognized, perhaps, was the love that inspired the gift. And love, wherever it comes from, always looks the same.
Jacqueline Hickey
Walking One Another Home
“If we let Mom stay alone in the house any longer, it will be neglect.”
My brother’s words to me on the phone set in motion an immediate sequence of events that include helping our mother move from the little house where she has lived for nearly 60 years into a retirement home apartment a hundred miles away. We will have a week to get the house packed up. In my mind’s eye I see her standing helplessly in her yellow kitchen, shoulders drooped, sensing something “bad” is about to happen, but not always remembering what. I cannot bear the thought of her last seven long days in that house—alone and facing a heart-wrenching move from her precious roots.
I teach my classes the next day and catch a red-eye special home to help her.
The seven days that follow are bittersweet ones: some of the richest days of my life, but some of the most challenging and poignant. Mom’s state of mind is immediately apparent. Over the phone she had told me she’d begun to pack, but when I arrive, only two cardboard boxes stand open in the back bedroom. At the bottom of one box lie two little lace doilies she crocheted before she and Dad got married. The other contains three rolls of toilet paper— nothing more. This is the extent of her “packing”; the rest is too overwhelming. “I just don’t know where to start, Rita.” Already my heart is weeping with her.
We do not start with packing. In fact, the whole week I am there, we do not take down a single picture or upset the orderliness of the house in any way. (My sisters’ orders: “You be the advance team, Rita. Just be with her in the grieving and in the good-byes. When we get there, we’ll pack. Okay?”)
I try to think of what might lift Mom’s spirits: maybe we can walk a bit by the lake—that’s sure to do it. Some of my earliest and sharpest memories of my mother are of her walking, everywhere, for the family owned no car.
What a confident, joyful walker she was! One remarkably vivid picture is engraved on my nine-year-old mind: It is a hot August day. Mom is striding briskly along the lake across from our house—toward the hospital on the other side—on her way to give birth to my sister Mary. On her way to give birth? Striding? Briskly? Yes. Dad could scarcely keep up with her.
In a way, walking has always been a prime measure of Mom’s state of well-being. Walking helps feed and create a positive sense of herself, gives her a feeling of aliveness, of vitality.
In later years, when all her kids are launched, walking around that little lake across from our house becomes a daily treat for Mom—once she has a car and doesn’t have to walk everywhere else. It is also a favorite ritual of ours when I come to visit. In the past three or four years, however, with her feet swollen and painful, Mom has not been up to it, much to her great dismay. Nevertheless, before I st
art out, I always ask anyway, “Are you able to go walking today, Mom?”
On my first day back, much to my surprise—as if she’s been waiting—she answers, “I sure am!” The lake is maybe a third of a mile around. We traipse around it three times, without a rest, pausing at each completed round to see if it is time to head home. “Let’s keep going!” she grins. (“See, I can still do this!”) We are both amazed and delighted at her newfound stamina. And she is very proud.
But the following days, she can scarcely walk at all, and certainly not around the lake; even getting in and out of the car becomes a strain. “I must have overdone it that first day, Rita.” Still, each day when I am ready to go walking, I invite her to join me, just in case she’s up to it again. Both of us are disappointed when she is unable to take even a leisurely stroll.
During those seven days, Mom and I laugh a lot, cry a little. We keep life pretty normal. Some mornings we go to Mass. Sometimes we invite favorite cronies out to lunch. At any time of the day or night, we find ourselves plunked down in the easy chairs in the living room, just gazing for hours at our favorite sight: the lake and the trees across from our house. How she loves that lake! We all do. We watch some television—the news, especially the weather, Lawrence Welk, Wheel of Fortune.
Each day the magic hour of five o’clock ushers in “happy hour.” At 4:55, Mom begins arranging hors d’oeuvres while I fix drinks. And we always clink our glasses in a toast to signal that “happy hour” has officially begun. (More than once that week, words for the toast stick in my throat.) After happy hour, we fix dinner together. Pop popcorn later. Maybe play some pinochle. All the while, a cloud hangs over these common ordinary things that we’ve enjoyed through the years.
Mom’s mini-strokes some weeks before have left her unable to drive, so we run errands she’s not been able to do alone—go to the bank, to the grocery store, to Kmart for denture tablets and other supplies. I drive her to get her hair permed for the last time by the woman who has done it for 35 years, to get her taxes figured by the same accountant who has performed that task for the Bresnahans since the early 1930s. Back at the house, we find ourselves just sitting and looking at that lake again, sometimes quietly, at other times reminiscing.
Certain aspects of the lake always intrigue her:
“See how the water glistens, just like diamonds.”
“The waves are really high today, aren’t they, Rita!”
“Isn’t the fountain pretty?”
“Look at all the people walking today. Do you see that one in the funny red hat?”
Too soon, my time with her comes to an end. On my last day home, the last day I will ever spend in this little house, I rise early so as to get some exercise before leaving for the airport. Mom is awake but still in bed, and to my usual invite to go for a walk, she answers, with sadness in her voice, “No, my legs are hurting me too much. You go ahead.”
My heart is heavy as I step out into the chill—a foggy Illinois morning, with visibility perhaps 100 yards or so. Setting off briskly, I spot a few other hardy souls, mere shapes in the mist, out for their morning constitutional. I circle the lake three or four times, then as I am rounding the curve that puts me in front of our little house, I discern a lone figure wearing a long garment, approaching slowly through the mist. As the figure draws closer, I realize it is my mother. She raises her hand in a wave, and I hurry to meet her, shouting, “Mom!” A long brown raincoat covers her flimsy nightgown.
“I just had to come meet you, Rita. Are you going around again?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mom. Do you feel like it?”
She is quiet for a moment, torn, it seems, by an inner struggle—between her unflagging spirit that has navigated that lake for almost 60 years and longs to walk it one last time, and every bone and muscle in legs that can no longer carry her and that shout, “No way!” The struggle registers in her face, she slowly shakes her head, looks down into the lake with a great sadness and murmurs haltingly, “Oh— Rita—let’s—just—walk—one another home.”
We turn around, and arm in arm, step by step, Mom and I begin shuffling the five minutes back toward our little house. It’s our last walk together here—we know it in our bones. Tears start, for both of us. I can feel her chest heaving, there where our arms are interlocked. As for myself, 58 years of memories are crowding in and streaming down my cheeks. We hold tightly onto one another’s arm.
The little house welcomes us back into the shelter of its warmth. It feels more like holy ground to me than it ever has before, rich with the fullness of life that has been lived here. Holy ground where, as a little girl, I learned not only how to walk, but how to “walk with one another.” Waves of gratefulness wash over me for all my parents taught me here, and for my mother’s walking... especially for her walking...
I help Mom out of the damp raincoat and into her warm blue bathrobe with the lacy cuffs. Shuddering and shivering as she ties the robe, she goes straight to the stove and puts the teakettle on as she’s done every morning for 60 years. “C’mon, Rita. Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea.”
Rita Bresnahan
The Making of a Woman
I watched with my dad as my mother came down the stairs. First appeared the tips of her red satin high heels, followed by smooth, creamy legs. The hem of her gray, watered-silk Chanel floated into view like a fog. The skirt funneled upward to a cinched waist, which began at once to reach outward again to claim a pair of proud, under-wired breasts, pressing against a red satin wrap that framed her bare shoulders and tucked in behind her elbows. She was the epitome of ’60s chic. Her scent reached us... heady, delicious.
I turned toward my father to see how he liked it and was riveted by a new expression on his face. He stared up at this creature-no-longer-his-wife with a glowing gaze that seemed to impale her like a butterfly on a pin. She stopped, midstep. A slightly startled smile touched her lips. “Well,” she murmured, “how do I look?”
“Come here, you,” he said—commanded.
I stared at these two people who had once been my parents. They seemed to share some secret that, strange as it seemed, obviously had nothing to do with me. I felt a sudden urge to wedge myself in between them. I saw him put her evening coat over her shoulders. He bent down and whispered something into her hair and she tilted back her head. A secret dawned in her eyes. Like the shutter of a camera, my mind captured that instant. It remained with me long after the door had closed behind them.
The next day I sat in my father’s chair waiting for him to come home. I wore my mother’s Chanel, the cinch belt pulled well past the last notch. I had found that when I sucked in my stomach and raised my ribcage, I gave a perfect impression of having breasts. I waited, my bare legs stretched in front of me like a model’s. I noticed the lipstick smear from when the tube had dropped from my hand, bounced off the bathroom counter and slalomed down the skirt. I hid it in a fold of fabric. Then I heard the key in the lock. Quickly I lifted my chest.
He stopped when he saw me, about to say hello as usual, but registering something different. I could practically see his workday drop from his mind like a dusty backpack as he took in the dress, the made-up face, the pose. His eyes softened, and then his face adopted a smile of pure Desi Arnaz charm. “Well!” he said. “Is this my lucky day? Let’s have a look at you.” I got off the chair and rustled toward him, stepping carefully. His amused eyes dropped to the red streak across the skirt, and his expression changed. He looked at me sharply. I stopped, for the first time realizing what I’d done: my mother’s favorite dress, impossibly expensive, a Christmas gift from Dad. We stared at each other, his eyes seemed to knife right through me...
Suddenly he crouched down and looked into my face. I saw the crinkles around his eyes, little white untanned rays, and the lank, brown hair with the blond layer on top. I saw my own skinny little body engulfed in this ocean of watered silk. Then I heard him whisper to me, “You’re growing up so fast, you know that? Someday I’m gonna turn
around and you’ll be the toast of the town. Your old Dad won’t be able to fight his way through the boys. Will he?”
All at once he picked me up and held me in a gigantic bear hug. My mother’s shoes flew from my dangling feet, landing noiselessly somewhere on the carpet. He squeezed the breath out of me, five o’clock shadow dug into my neck, drawing a muffled scream of laughter before he gently put me back down. He crouched again. “Don’t grow up too fast, you,” he ordered. He tapped my flat, unremarkable nose.
And for the first time he didn’t call it “the freckle farm.”
Doni Tamblyn
Tribute to Dad
My father died three weeks after his 80th birthday. No one read about it in the headlines since he’d never invented anything to speak of or lit up the big screen or amassed a huge fortune. His most outstanding achievement was that he was a nice guy. But that seldom makes the headlines. “Harold Halperin, Nice Guy, Dies at Age 80.”
For most of his adult life he owned a corner drugstore with his brother-in-law. It was the old-fashioned kind of store with friendly service, a soda fountain and a gumball machine where the gum still cost a penny and you could even get a “winner” to trade in for a candy bar. Although his customers could have bought their prescriptions cheaper at the chain across the street, they came to my dad’s because his “Hello, Mr. Jones!” did more to heal than any of the drugs.
When he retired at the age of 70, my dad started a second career working for the Hershey Company, stocking candy racks at the local 7-Eleven’s and White Hen Pantries. Although he was supposed to throw away the outdated candy bars, one of his greatest pleasures in life was to share them with the neighborhood kids or bring them to the local soup kitchen for the homeless to enjoy. Everyone called him the Candyman.