Porcelain Doll

In the eighties, when I was in high school, my mom took a doll-making class and made three porcelain dolls, one for me and one for each of my sisters. During this time she was working as a night nurse at the hospital, putting in lots of overtime, raising four kids, and dealing with the demands of a difficult husband.

Her life was tough. She was only getting a few hours of constantly interrupted sleep each day (I can remember her dozing off when she was trying to eat supper), and yet she found the energy to take a doll-making class. That’s amazing to me.

Mom doesn’t consider herself talented or artistic, but she is—and I have never met anyone with such a strong creative drive. When we kids were growing up, she was always struggling to make things nice and pretty for us, even though she was broke and even though Dad made fun of her projects.

Mom spent months painting the porcelain dolls and sewing their elaborate dresses and bonnets by hand. She gave us the dolls for Christmas 1982.

Here is my doll, India, posing in my daffodil patch. I’ll try to take pictures of Kris and Bunny’s dolls too and post them here soon for you to see. Kris’s doll is a dark-haired toddler in a light blue dress, and Bunny’s is a newborn baby in a pink dress.