Christmas Magic ‘Maude’

I found her again, not many years ago, tucked away under the eaves behind the closet of my girlhood room. Mother maintained I’d called her Maude, though why I would ever have selected such a name for my favorite doll, I can’t imagine.

The popular names of that childhood era were Patsy, Jo Ann or Carol perhaps, but Maude?

Obviously it wasn’t her name that made this doll so special. I couldn’t even remember that. What I did remember was her new look and the wonderful wardrobe of clothes that appeared the Christmas that I was 8.

Although times were hard, my parents sheltered my sisters and me from reality, and I, at least, was unaware of their financial struggles.

Christmas morning came. We girls rushed excitedly into the living room, and there, on the hearth beneath the stockings filled with the ritual orange, assorted nuts and hard candy sat Maude.

Gone was the tired mat of thinning hair she’d worn the day before. Once she had been a beautiful doll with a halo of golden curls, and now, once again, she was beautiful. But overnight Maude had become a brunette, and oh, what a lovely new dress she wore.

How many nights, after my sister and I were tucked in bed, had Mother spent creating this newfound beauty? The hair was real, made from the “switch” that was my mother’s hair before she’d had it bobbed.

And the wardrobe - a beautiful red wool coat lined with silk and styled with scalloped cuffs and collar. A black velvet jacket and pleated flannel skirt, like the one I so admired that my girlfriend wore. (A rich maiden aunt sent her clothes from the city. Mine were made at home.)

And there were play clothes, summer pajamas to match my own, an outing flannel nightgown, and a matching set of dainty silk panties and slip to wear beneath a fancy new party dress.

Christmas 1933 - what a wonderful year. Its greatest joy, however, came some 59 years later. What a blessing to have found Maude and her lovely finery in time to share with Mother in reliving happy memories from my youth.

Did I tell her, did she understand what that gift symbolized to me?

The tiny stitches that shaped the seams exemplified the loving care, concern and thoughtfulness that stitched our lives together throughout the years. Far more than just a wig and wardrobe, that gift was part of Mother, symbolic of her character that blended creativity with practicality, generosity with thrift, and an ability to experience childlike delights while living a life of mature reality.

A gift to cherish, that is Maude.