A Grandmother remembers a little girl who wants a baby doll for Christmas. A child never forgets her memories of a Christmas past.

"Dear Santa". Two words full of hope and expectation. What excitement they stir in young hearts and minds! What memories they bring surging back to the not-so-young.
As I read the letters to Santa that were stapled to the bulletin board in the hallway of the day care where I am employed, I began to smile at the lists of toys and games our kindergarten boys and girls wanted to find under their Christmas tree on Christmas morning.
The toys may change from year to year or generation, but little girls will always want baby dolls and boys will always want adventure toys.
I drove home from work thinking of one of my own Christmases past. Each Christmas has it's own story to tell.
The first Christmas I really remember was when I was around five years old. I was a gangly, freckle-faced girl with a short brown hair cut like a "little Dutch boy". I could climb trees, swim, run like a deer and chunk rocks accurately.
My brother Jack was two years older than I, and he was more adept at these talents than I. We spent many carefree days in the hills of Northwest Arkansas not realizing the great burden that had been placed on our own mother: widowed at the age of thirty-eight with seven children to feed, house and school.
I was the baby of the family being eighteen months old when my dad died. Mom always managed. I can never remember being hungry, but I can remember biscuits and gravy and cardboard in the soles of my shoes to cover the holes I had worn in them.
Christmas was an exciting time. We would go up into the woods and sometimes walk for miles to find the right cedar tree to cut and drag back to the house. It was always crisp and cold in December. We usually stuck the tree into a bucket and put rocks around the trunk to hold it upright and straight. Then we draped a sheet around the bucket, and it became a snowdrift under the tree. Strings of popcorn, holly berries, stars cut from cardboard and covered with tin foil or cellophane, and paper chains from crayon-colored paper glued together with flour paste all adorned the tree. Everyone pitched in and helped with the decorations.
I remember at this particular Christmas we were on welfare. A lady would come to our home and ask a lot of questions and look around. I recall that one time a neighbor had given my mom some cabbage, so the welfare lady deducted the cost of the cabbage from what we were supposed to get.
Anyway, this Christmas the welfare people brought Jack and me a pencil box made from cardboard with a pencil, an eraser and five or six crayons in it. That was good - I would enjoy that, but what I wanted was a baby-doll. It's great to have a good imagination and pretend a stick with bark peeled off of it and wrapped in a blanket is your baby, but what a thrill it would be to have one with fat cheeks and blue painted eyes.
Well, I guess I was content to settle for my pencil box and a big juicy orange. I would eat the orange; then I would eat the peel. It was all good.
Aunt Maggie, my Dad's sister and Uncle Tom arrived at our house on Christmas day from Oklahoma. They brought all of us girls some material for new dresses, and they gave Jack a new pair of overalls. That was great, we all needed new clothes. But then, out of a box, or bag, or something came this big, shiny, red dump truck for the man of the family, brother Jack. I cried. I sobbed. I would not be consoled. Mom was embarrassed, and I know that Aunt Maggie must have felt terrible. Who wanted material for a new dress when what they really needed was a baby-doll?!
When Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tom went home to Oklahoma, she bought me the only doll I have ever owned. It came, not in Santa's sleigh, but by the U.S. Mail, wrapped in brown paper and tied with several layers of twine string. Mom cut the twine, but she let me open the paper and the box.
I tell you, it looked like a real baby in that box. Its head was round and plump, the hair was engraved with curly waves, and its eyes opened and closed. Its arms and legs were fat and dimpled and they moved! It wore a little white dress, a diaper with a gold pin, and booties, and my heart and life was filled with the joy of love.