Day 22/365: Maude and Pearl

Day 22/365: Maude and Pearl
Originally uploaded by donnyatx

Toilet paper dolls. I know... make the jokes!

Well these two dolls, however silly, mean quite a bit to me.

When I was 13 I went back to England and spent the summer with my grandparents. I was 13... and very bored. I wanted to come back home and be with my friends and goof around like 13 year olds do, not be stuck with my grandparents all summer.

Silly me... that was a great experience and I was lucky to have it. But at 13 I was just not mature enough to understand that. I spent a lot of time reading my mother's old books in her room. I enjoyed that. We went to the Seaside and to the zoo, and various other things.

My grandparents were great people. My grandfather was a carpenter until he was so crippled from his Rheumatoid arthritis that he could no longer work. My grandmother was very fussy and particular about her house. Everything had to be kept very clean and neat and tidy. I was a tidy person myself so that worked out fine!

On to the dolls! Both were made by my grandmother's mother. That summer I was able to meet her, she was very old and frail. I realized that would be the last time I would have a chance to meet her.

After I came home she passed away. My grandmother sent me the doll with the blue dress and she kept the one with the green and white dress. She named them Maude (mine) and Pearl (hers). I never really cared for the name Maude, but it was funny. At one point I lost Maude's purse and my grandmother knitted 2 more for me, a blue one and a white one.

Over the years she and I wrote many letters to each other. Since I was able to write, I remember sending letters each week to them. My grandfather never wrote letters, I guess partly being a guy and partly because of the pain he had.

After she sent Maude to me we started making up stories about the "sisters". Maude was pretty normal, no major issues with her. But Pearl! Oh my she was a naughty girl.

By the time we were done with all the stories Pearl had 16 kids, with 16 fathers, and all different races. It was quite humorous to us at the time. Bear in mind I was a teenager and she was in her 60s, lol. We both had the same kind of strange humor. Pearl visited bars every night and Maude stayed in to clean.

I'll never forget laughing at those letters as we wrote back and forth to each other. When she died, I asked my mom to bring Pearl back with her. Pearl's faded but she is still fluffy, I don't think she's ever been laundered. I've washed mine a few times so she's no longer fluffy like Pearl.

They live in my closet these days, but I may put them back out on display at some point. Just not yet.

That's the story of the toilet paper dolls! :-)

~Donna