a doll's life

This baby-sized doll has been in my family for nearly 70 years. She has never grown up but she's aging. I keep her out on top of a bookcase in a safe corner. Numerous girls and boys over three generations have pushed her in a doll stroller, bandaged her up with a doctor's kit, changed her clothes, read her to sleep, scolded and taken tea with her. Her eyes still open and close but the voice is gone (she used to say mama if you turned her a certain way). The doll's body is made of cloth but I recently noticed that limbs and face (made of something else) are crazed and cracking. This dry climate and high altitude are hell on skin and hair - real or otherwise - and a  lot of us are crazed and cracking up these days in the sun and constant wind. This one doesn't need an intervention yet, nor can she go for a facial. At some point I'll check out doll hospitals, but before I send her away I want to finish that pair of booties I'm knitting, and try them on the doll's feet (that are real-baby size) before giving them away. OMG! I'm becoming my mother! She used to knit little doll sweaters and hats and change its clothes seasonally! I'm not talking about when she was a girl either. This happened during the years after I left home as a young adult when she was 59 and before she died at 84! After her death I gently removed the doll from a dormer corner in a Bronx attic, took it home and put my daughter's christening dress and hat on it.

Even in the spring wind
no grit gets in her eyes
- a small girl's old doll