Last night I was thinking about Christmases past- then read Jerri's post. They were both along the same lines.

I had three sisters growing up. (The other two came much later and one had a different mother.) For Christmas, we all received dolls and doll clothes, all of them carefully hand-made by my mother, who was a professional seamstress. My mother knew I loved ball gowns ("princess dresses") and my doll's dresses were exquisite!

My older sister, who was five years older than me, outgrew dolls before the rest of us. My two younger sisters manged to beat up their dolls, loose their clothes, and sometimes the dolls themselves before Christmas rolled around again. I treasured my dolls and their clothes and would not allow my younger sisters to play with them because of how they abused their own toys. Each doll had a name. My two favorites were Sissy and Bunny. Sissy's artificial hair had worn down to little nubs (she was the oldest) and Bunny was a cloth rabbit with a doll's face and human-like arms and legs. The rest were Barbie doll knock-offs as we could not afford a real Barbie until I was almost too old for dolls. I had every doll I had ever been given since I was five years old.

I had a small trunk that I used to store my dolls and their clothes. Some of the clothes were just scraps of cloth or silk scarves that I wound around their bodies, but they meant so much to me! I likely played with dolls past the age when most girls abandoned them because the make-believe world I created when playing with them was a refuge from the ugliness of the real world. My dolls were my friends.

When I left for the convent-school I could not take my dolls with me. I came home only once for a visit and discovered that my mother had given all of my dolls to my younger sisters- who immediately lost or destroyed them. Last night, for the first time in decades I remembered that horrible sense of loss and pain when I learned my 'friends' had been trashed or lost. I had cried at the time, only to be ridiculed by my mother. I was too old for dolls, she chided, and since I was away and could not play with them anymore, it was selfish of me not to want to give them to my younger sisters. She never asked me if she could or even thought to do so. She never understood that they were not just dolls to me.

That was the last time I ever visited my mother, my family. After that, she got so lost in her alcohol addiction that she even stopped writing to me. I think the alcohol helped her forget the daughter she blamed for their situation, and soon after that, child welfare removed my younger sisters.

I am telling you this but not really dwelling on it. I have too many wonderful Christmas memories from later years and with my own children. Memories of Christmas with Tod are bittersweet. While I feel the loss, I can still smile remembering the joy he gave me.