Memory Monday: The Last Doll

THE TRADITION OF THE LAST DOLL

At Christmas when I was in the fourth grade, my parents gave me a 36-inch walking doll. If you stood behind her, held her shoulder, and gently pivoted her on one heel, the other leg would shift forward. In doing this repeatedly and alternating from right to left, you could make her walk. Now understand, I didn’t even know about walking doll in the fourth grade, but I think my mother thought they were terrific, so I got one for Christmas. Not only that, but I was told that she was my last doll (at least from them). I don’t know if it was because she was my last doll or because she was so big (she could actually were my little sisters’ clothes at the time), but I took care of her.

 Years later, my husband and I had a little girl. And as you can probably guess, I put my doll (I never did name her) in our daughter’s room and she would play with her.

A couple of years later (it was for our daughter’s 3rd birthday), my parents came for a visit. My mother had made my daughter and my doll matching dresses.

We continued the Tradition of the Last Doll with our daughter as she got older. She decided she wanted an American Doll for her last doll. For Christmas when she was in the fifth grade, we gave her Samantha. My mother used scraps that she had collected for years from her sewing and made a wardrobe of twenty-five outfits, including a nightgown. Our daughter took Samantha with her everywhere. Even in college, she put her up on a high shelf in her dorm room.
 A couple of years before my mother passed away, she made a wedding dress and long, long veil from the satin and lace from which she had made my wedding dress years before. While we were planning our daughter’s wedding, she asked if we could include Samantha somehow. At the reception, we set up my grandparents’ two-tiered table and put Samantha(in that wedding dress and veil)  on the top tier along with a small wooden table and chair. Below the doll, we put little gifts for the children that came to the wedding.

After she married, my daughter left Samantha with me for safe keeping—which worked out well because several years ago her home was destroyed in a tornado. Samantha now sits on a shelf in my library with some other dolls I’ve collected, waiting for my daughter’s daughter to get old enough to play with her. (Samantha is in the picture above, bottom shelf on the left, wearing one of the dresses my mother made, along with a set of beads she strung.)
By the way, and over fifty years since I got her, I still have my last doll. She is in perfect shape, well except for the right index finger that broke off ( although I have it and will glue it back on one of these day) and I still have the little white rubber shoes that she came with.
Do you have any “special things” from your childhood? What are they?