Dear Sydney –
The doll’s bed was mine when I was a little girl like you.  Now I am your Grandmother.  The sheets are made from a hand-woven linen pillow case, part of your great-great-great grandmother’s wedding dowry.  The eyelet embroidery on the sheet was made by your great grandmother.  The tatting on the pillow case was made by your great-great aunt.  The mattress is filled with hair from the crib mattress your father slept on when he was a little boy.  I hope you will love them all and have a good time playing with them.
Your loving Nana

I well remember that doll’s bed.  It was made of heavy wire – probably three or four strands twisted together and fashioned into a fancy pattern at the head and foot.  It was a light green color (a color I would later hear irreverently called “baby-shit green”) and not a color you would imagine for a doll’s bed, but somehow it was exactly right.

The note written in my paternal grandmother’s spidery handwriting is on the inside of a Christmas card and, as I recall, the little (maybe 18 inches long by eight inches wide by five inches high) bed was a Christmas present in 1941.  I was five.

By then, I already had quite a collection of dolls from around the world, given to me by my mother’s brother Edwin who travelled in his work and had no children of his own.   The dolls were “not-to-be-played-with” and were kept in a special display cabinet in our living room.  I understood right away that although the lovely doll’s bed would not fit in the cabinet, it was in the same “look at only” category, but I was allowed to keep it in my room on top of a tall dresser.

As the years went by, the little bed was always there – a beloved part of my little girlhood but not often consciously thought of.  And then it just… disappeared.  Along with my storybook dolls and my autographed pictures of movie stars and my three-story dollhouse, the doll’s bed from Nana was gone from my life.

I don’t really know when I noticed.  I remember asking my mom when I was in eighth or ninth grade and we had moved for the second or third time:  “What happened to all my toys?”  Her answer was vague but I was left with the feeling that she and dad had “cleaned out” my room when they packed up for our first big transition.  Whether they gave my toys away or threw them out is unclear.  And, I can only think that the doll’s bed went along with the rest, perhaps by mistake.

When I ran across Nana’s note yesterday, I cried.  The tears came of their own volition and seemed to be for all the underappreciated and lost parts of my life and for the unanswered questions and the unspoken thank yous and the unintended hurts received or given.  But at least I still have her loving message.  I guess that’s something.