The new fangled television box sat in our living room with bendable rabbit ears catching the signal. The TV displayed snowy white static most of the day but about the time I got home from school, there was Bozo the Clown, and the Little Rascals with Alfalfa, and Queen for a Day. One day I saw a commercial for Tiny Tears. This was a doll who cried “real” tears.

I thought about Tiny Tears as we took the escalator up. I could almost touch the massive christmas tree branches in the center of the store as we went up and up until we got to the star on top of the tree, even with the eighth floor. That was where we got off and found the line to see Santa. He scared me with his massive beard and deep strange voice, but I knew that if I sat on his knee, I might be able to get my wish. So I did it and was relieved when my turn was over.

It blew my mind that Santa actually delivered the Tiny Tears doll in a baby carriage, right to the front door. I tried to push through adults, towards the door to get a better look but he came and went in a flash. “Why didn’t Santa stay?, “ I asked. Mom said he had a lot of deliveries that night. Which made a lot of sense. Of course, I didn’t recognize that he was really my Uncle Phil.

That same year, my brother Jim was in the army, stationed in Korea and was expected home for Christmas. Mom clapped her hands with delight and decorated the house while the cookies baked. It would be the best Christmas ever. I idolized my brother Jim and missed him so deeply. Mom worried about Jim’s safety overseas and found comfort that he would at least be safe while he was home for Christmas.

Then, on Christmas Eve, the phone rang. It was Jim. He was so sorry, he said, but at the last minute the commanding officer would not sign the papers to grant him leave. Mom slumped on the couch, lit a cigarette, and stared off in the distance. This was going to be a rotten Christmas, after all.

Snow was falling that Christmas eve. I can just picture Jim in full army uniform standing in a phone booth on the corner of California and Peterson, making that call.

Ten minutes later the door bell rang and there he was.. a standing gift, my good-looking brother all greened up in his army duds and military cap, flashing his toothy smile and crystal blue eyes. He yelled like Santa HO HO HO. The screen door slammed behind him and he picked me up and swirled me high in the air. He gave me one of those juicy kisses, the things we all learned to dread. But I took it like a trouper because he was just so excited to see me and me him.

He opened up his green duffle bag and fished out a box for me. It was a Korean doll with a red and blue satiny kimono and black straight hair. She was made of china and her skin was a creamy and smooth. Unlike my tiny tears doll, she would sit on a shelf and be an object of beauty. I wouldn’t think of actually playing with her, she was too delicate and her clothes couldn’t come on and off. She was pretty to look at.

It was the best Christmas ever, not only did I have Jim but I had two new dolls. Tiny Tears wanted my love and care so I got busy. I wrapped her in a flannel pink blanket and rocked her back and forth in my arms. I told her everything will be alright, she now had her mom, that was me, to care for her and any little peep from her and I would be there. She came with three triangle flannel diapers with tiny gold safety pins. I fed her the bottle with real water and squeezed her tummy and sure enough, just like the commercial, tears dripped from the holes in the corners of her eyes and the diaper got wet. I changed her and did it again and again.

This Christmas was so full of joy, I didn’t know then that this would be the standard with which I measured every subsequent Christmas. Of course, they all paled after this one.

It spoiled me. Kind of like once you try a very good drug, you can never be content with normal every day existence. Which is a good argument, right there, to pass on the passing of the pipe. You probably won’t be able to unhook yourself.

So, did my parents do me a disservice by making my fifth christmas so perfect? I don’t think it was something they orchestrated. I think I just happened to be ripe. For one thing, I believed wholeheartedly in Santa Claus. For another thing, I was the perfect age to love a baby doll, and then there was Jim and he could never deliver a surprise so welcome as his appearance at the front door in December of 1955. And another thing is that this is the Christmas I chose to revere. I don’t remember the fight my dad and his father got into and I don’t remember my mom dropping a full dish ready for the table. I don’t remember if these things even happened on “that” Christmas but we weave our stories from the fabric of memory and we hang on.

In most cases, we hang on to the stuff we want to remember. This was put to the test several years ago during a writing class. The assignment was to take something I loved and write why I hated it. During this exercise I realized that all things have love and hate. It is what we choose to remember that gives us lasting fondness or not.

This is what I wrote: Why I Hate My Tiny Tears Doll

I hated her because she got cracked and then she was old. Her skin shriveled up. I hated her because the mechanism that allowed her eyes to close when she lay down got gummed up so she just stayed in a permanent wide awake stare. Santa brought her to my house in a little buggy with blue and yellow daisies printed on the plastic carriage. She cried real tears when you squeezed her. I hated her because when I gave her the bottle she wet her diaper and then I had to change it. At first I thought this was fun but after a while, I thought, what’s the point? I hated her because she was so stiff, not soft and cuddly like a teddy bear. But she seemed so real at first with her ability to cry real tears and to wet her diaper but she wasn’t that real. I remember the commercial said she cried real tears. I thought that meant she would cry out loud, I saw dolls like that. You squeezed them and they cried. So I was disappointed she didn’t make any noise. I liked the dolls that came out later that were all wrinkled and had soft skin and looked like real newborn babies. They had cloth, squishy bodies and real looking hair, not all stiff, coarse, and curly like my tiny tears doll’s hair.

What baby has perfectly curled hair like that —so thick and poking through the scalp in little tufts, like a bald man with plugs. I hated her because she never cried or cooed or said anything like a real baby. It occurs to me now that while I played with my doll, I was preparing myself to be a mother and when I finally became one, I couldn’t have the baby. I had to give her away. I guess it is now that I look back that I hated that tiny tears because she showed me what I couldn’t have. I think at the time I liked her. I hated that she got old and eventually the rubber was brittle and her arms and legs fell out of the sockets.Then I threw her away. When I gave my baby away, it was just like throwing away my tiny tears, but my baby was perfect. She had her arms and legs and she cried real tears, real ones. And I loved her but I gave her away.

This piece: why I hate my Tiny Tears doll was created in October 2010. I was surprised that I would take that fond memory and turn it into a related piece about the baby I gave up for adoption. I published my book Sunlight on My Shadow in 2013. So perhaps this writing exercise put me in touch with these regrets. You never know what will be revealed to you in the writing. It is a most dynamic and lively process. As we write, we peel away the layers of mundane until we discover the universal nuggets of our human existence. These become the bright stars of the dark night.

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Why I Hate My Tiny Tears Doll

Judy Liautaud