~for one to call "my own"~

It was on a Friday during second grade "show and tell" time that I first met her.  She was this beautiful doll that had a magical string embedded in her back and when you pulled it she said the most marvelous of things.

Things like~

"I love you!" and "Please take me home with you."

She belonged to a little girl in my class named Kathy and the doll had been a Christmas present to her only a few weeks back.  The doll was called Chatty Cathy and how I wished that I too could have one but I knew that would be impossible.  Those special dolls cost more money than my family would be able to pay.  I was sure that only rich little girls would find one in their arms and most of the other regular girls, kids like me, would only be able to wish for one.  Funny how you think when you are 7 years old and the world revolves around the things other kids have and you do not.

I remember once that I asked for one from my folks and the look on my mom's face when she gave me the answer will always stick with me.  She knew that I wanted one because every time that doll's commercials came across the old black and white TV screen in our living room I ran to watch it.  She'd even heard me tell of my friend Kathy having one.  It wasn't because she was mean or uncaring that Mom gave me the answer of "no" when I asked for one.  The reasons I couldn't have one were pretty much plain and simple.

1. We were a farming family, a household of 9 people all together.
2. Chatty Cathy was way too expensive.
3. The bottom line was this.  We couldn't afford it.

I soon got over it and moved on to wishing for bigger and better things.  Things like the little chimpanzees that were always on the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights.  For two years straight I begged my folks to let us have an "8th" child, one that we could dress up in little clothes and teach tricks to.  They always looked so cute and well behaved as they jumped rope or rode a little tricycle.  I never once saw them do anything naughty and thus in my way of thinking, they would be a great addition to our already huge family.  My folks said "NO" to that idea too.  I simply could NOT catch a break. They did however wrap up a very cute chimpanzee holding a banana in his hand for my Christmas of 1962.  It satisfied me enough that I quit asking and I have no recollection of begging for anything else in particular for the rest of my childhood days.

I have retold those memories over the years to all of the students that I have taught, both here in Colorado and back home in Kansas as well.  They smile as I tell them of my furtive pleas for a toy that I already knew I could not have but one that I just had to ask for anyway.  This year I relayed that memory to some very special little girls in my first grade classroom as we were reading a new book during our after school book club in the fall.  They listened intently as I told them my "sad" story of never having a fancy doll when I was a little girl and how I still secretly longed for one from time to time.  That little trio of good friends and their sweet mommas put their heads together and secretly hatched a plan to help me get one for Christmas just this December. When they handed me a Christmas card that contained a gift certificate towards the purchase of one, their eyes lit up like it was they themselves who would receive it.  They have loving hearts, ones acquired by watching the examples of their own mothers.  Yesterday at long last, after waiting for a month because she was "out of stock" until mid-January, my own special doll arrived in the mailbox.  In the winter of my soon approaching 60th year, the "little girl that still lives inside of me" could smile as she held a special treasure.

This is Addy, an American Girl doll.  The after school book club kids have been reading her story, one that tells of what it would have been like to be a slave back in the early 1860's.  I chose her because of the historical importance of the time and because she is so pretty :)

It felt funny, in a very nice way, to open up the box that she was in.  The company that makes these dolls takes great care in their shipping and poor Addy was fastened in there pretty well.  Good thing that I am 59 and not 7 right now.  I might not have been patient enough to wait for someone to help me get her out of there.  Mike took his pocket knife and cut through all of the many fasteners.  As I picked her up and held her there was actually such a happy feeling inside of me, one that I had been waiting for nearly all of my life.

Tomorrow that wonderful doll will head to school with me and there she will become a part of our classroom community.  There is a special seat, high atop a bookshelf, where dear Addy can watch all the kids as they do their best work each and every day.  It will be nice to show her to the rest of the kids and I will promise to be "good" and allow everyone who wishes to hold her the chance to do so.

As I look back on it now, with the eyes of someone quite removed from the days of my youth, I survived quite well without an expensive doll underneath the Christmas tree.  Perhaps it was meant for me to wait for nearly half of a century before I could actually call a doll like Addy "mine".  Never in my wildest of dreams did I believe that I would own one.

Nor did I ever imagine that I would meet the three special little girls whose gift this was to me.  
They are a part of "the 21", a group of children whom I love very much and will hold close to my heart forever.