Several months ago, I wrote about the value of a small, cloth dolly when my 1-year-old lost her most beloved toy for several hours.
Doll has been Adriana’s best friend ever since she was born. Doll saw her through her teething days and one of Adriana’s first words was Doll.
Now, Adriana is more mobile and active than ever before. She likes to take care of Doll; she gives her a bottle and washes her face with a diaper wipe. Adriana takes Doll with her everywhere, inside and out, and loves to put her away in small places like the oven of the toy kitchen or the cabinet with the canned goods. With all that activity, Doll was bound to get lost again, but it still caused major trauma to our family when it happened.
This time around, Doll was lost for three days. Well, technically, she was never found. I took it a lot harder than Adriana. She very calmly and maturely kept asking me, “Doll? Doll?” She even went to bed with a stuffed elephant that sings lullabies without much fuss.
I was heartbroken for Adriana when she sweetly asked for her favorite toy. It sent me on a plunge in the emotional roller coaster of motherhood. We frantically looked everywhere - under furniture, inside cabinets, outside in the yard, in the clean and dirty laundry basket, in the trash - for three days before Igave up in despair.
Doll was actually a baby shower present for my 6-year-old, so she is no longer available in stores. I informed my husband that we were going to have to order a new Doll online.As I wrote last time, there are a number of online stores that sell “out-of-print” dolls and stuffed animals, and market them to desperate parents like us. Some of them called Doll a collector’s item and sold her for more than $50, plus shipping! We found a Doll for sale on an online auction site for the bargain price of $16.95 and ordered her.
The next morning I sat down to write a column about all the Dolly drama, but little did I know it was just beginning. After work I went to Walmart with my children and my mother. We were looking at children’s clothes when Adriana saw a very similar dolly - with some important differences.
“Doll, Doll,” she shouted and reached eagerly, and when my Mom handed her the “fake” doll she grinned from ear to ear and gave it a mighty hug. That’s when my Mom showed her a stuffed bear for little boys and asked, “How about a bear?”
Adriana grabbed the bear with the other hand and held onto two animals as tightly as her little arms could squeeze. When we checked out, the cashier had to lean over and scan the tags in Adriana’s arms. She didn’t release her grip until we had to pry them loose in order to put her in her car seat in the parking lot.
Now we had a fake doll, a bear and a new doll on the way in the mail. Two days later, the new doll arrived in the mail box. The doll was in perfect condition, vacuum packed inside a plastic bag, but upon closer examination, she didn’t rattle. The new Doll had a rattle box inside her head instead of inside her body,and a “scar” on the back of her head from an apparent surgery on her rattle box.
What to do? Send the new Doll back? Try to perform another surgery and transplant a good rattle box from an unloved Pooh bear? I showed Adriana the mute Doll and she grabbed her in a big hug.
“If she’s happy, don’t mess with it,” my husband wisely said.
Adriana happily cared for her expanded family for one more day before tragedy struck again. We went on some errands and when we returned it was time for nap time. There was a bear, but no dolls. I searched the car and then the house, but there were still no dolls. I racked my brain, where could they be?
I remembered putting the dolls in the car at the school, and then at the store. After that we had stopped at the gas station and I had rolled down the windows so the car wouldn’t get too hot while I was pumping gas. I called the gas station.
“No, nobody has turned anything in,” said the gas station attendant, “Wait a minute, there is something pink laying out there by the gas pump. I think it’s your doll.”
We drove back to the gas station and retrieved the wayward dolls. Adriana had apparently thrown them out the open window - her intentions are good but her parenting skills have not quite matured.
The dolls were unharmed, with only a few smudges of dirt that came out in the wash, but now I have to be three times as vigilant and paranoid to keep track of two dolls and a bear. And somewhere out there is the original Doll, all alone and sad. We will probably find her when Adriana is 16.
Janelle Jessen is a reporter and staff writer for the Westside Eagle Observer. She may be reached by e-mail at jjessen @ nwaonline.com.
Opinion, Pages 7 on 10/20/2010