Flat Kira's Christmas morning

at the castle at last!

I'm sittin' in "the castle's" tree!



Santa left some goodies for me!













Uncle Jamie, Cassie, and Michael are
checking out Christmas stockings!





I FINALLY got to meet Michael!





and Cassie let me play with
one of her Disney fairies too!





Cassie offered to paint my fingernails! 

Do I have fingernails, Kira Rose?



Flat Kira: Days 3 and 4

Dear Kira Rose,

Grandmommy says we only have one more day of this middle school stuff before we can be truly home (at her home anyway) for the holidays.  YEAH!!!

After watching all those big kids take their exams yesterday (reading and writing and reading and writing and they still had to read and write some more today!), I was exhausted!  Last night, Grandmommy put on a movie that she was planning to show to one of her classes today and tomorrow.  It was about this really stingy old guy named Scrooge who is scared by a bunch of ghosts into changing his ways.  He was still pretty old at the end of the story . . . older than Grandmommy even (and that's old!) . . . but he wasn't a grouch any more.  So I guess those ghosts were good ghosts?

Anyway, I must have fallen asleep on the couch the second the movie was over.  I don't even remember Grandmommy carrying me upstairs and tucking me into bed.  And I didn't get to write to you like I'd hoped  . . .  Did you miss me?

Today was more of that reading and writing exam stuff , though we did get to see the beginning of A Christmas Carol in her last class.  We were just to the good part--the part where Scrooge sees the ghost who's all tied up in clunky chains--when the bell rang for school to be over!  Some of her second block class students brought Grandmommy Christmas presents.  She wouldn't unwrap them but they look like chocolate to me!!!!   YUM!!!

I also got to sit on Grandmommy's lap(top) while she worked on school stuff during lunch (we had granola bars and bananas), something she was writing for the school newsletter about the history of the Christmas card.  Did you know that stamps and Christmas cards were invented at about the same time . . . and actually just a few years after A Christmas Carol (the book, not the movie) was published?  I feel almost  like I've been teleported back to the 1840's the last 24 hours!!!

I think that, after dinner, we may be doing something in the living room with this box she received from FEDEX last night . . . I'll let you know how that goes!

Love you bunches and miss you even more!

Flat Kira

P. S. Do you know what a "receiver" is?

P. P. S.  It's a little bit warmer outside, but now it's raining!  Yuck!!!  Did you get snow today???

big sister

Michelle arrived a week late, that very hot Virginia July of 1971. Kimberly and Raggedy Ann spent that week and more visiting Mama :-)

Sibling rivalry indeed?! Kimberly was born knowing how to be a big sister . . .

holding court

Hazel, Rosie, Princess Mary...

HAZEL, ROSIE, PRINCESS MARY

blew into my world when I was seven.

I remember them still...

Home from school...early

(Hazel was coming, they said)

Whooooshing

Howwwwwwwwwwling

Daylight dark

I remember the wonder, the awe, the power

of Miss Hazel, outside...

and Daddy and Mommy and Evie, baby Pat, me

all safe inside...

and when the yellow sky came, and the eerie quiet,

Daddy sitting in the truck

in our front yard

listening to the radio...

Rosie was born that October day

--before or after Mommy fed Pat

by the light of my First Communion candle?-

I don't remember--

but I remember that Rosie

(Mommy made her for me)

was beautiful

and I loved her...

Showed Rosie off to my best friend...

Embarrassed Mommy (all these years, I never knew)...

Mary came into my world that Christmas,

Ideal's princess,

and I loved her too!

Sad, sad Rosie,

discarded childhood treasure

cremated

(cleaning up the past, moving on, they said...)

and Hazel's memory

overwritten

by the Donnas and Hugos of my life...

But Mary, my princess,

smiles down at me from her basket throne...

and I love her still...

Ideal's baby

His mother’s name was Mary. Ideal? What more fitting label for them both?

When I discovered Him on Ebay, time telescoped to my eighth Christmas, when I was seven, to my much beloved Princess Mary. I found her Ebay twin, bringing this Mary and her baby (two of them, actually) home to people my grandchildren’s Nativity, to welcome a new millennium.

Revlon ballerina angels. Another maker’s Bob (or was it Bill?) now-known-as-Joseph. A shabby chic lop-rockered green wicker cradle, gardener’s moss for mattress. Simple homemade cloaks, cords to anchor them to brows and waist, feet bare...

I was curious about this Ideal baby. How had I missed meeting Him all those years of being a child, of having children of my own? I bought a book, an Ebay find, an Ideal history. I read.

In 1956, Ideal created millions of dolls in the image of our infant Savior—some Protestant, some Catholic. (Wasn’t He born a Jew?) Churches approved, I’m told.

The public wasn’t buying. Thousands of overstocked babies. Ideal in crisis, financial ruin on the horizon. One salesman’s solution? Sell the babies, all bids accepted, no questions asked.

Did you know that, in the depths of the gray Atlantic off the coast of Hatteras, there’s a breakwater made, at least in part, of those babies no one wanted? Sacrilege? I thought so.

I had not thought of burial at sea. I had not thought of the Graveyard of the Atlantic. I had not thought beyond the seemingly callous, convenient disposal of something sacred.

Burial at sea is for all time. Although the dolls were not scattered (much as Catholic tradition does not sanction the scattering of human remains), all the Atlantic is now their grave.

What blessing, what honor for men and women whose remains have also been committed to the deep!

[This story is for Kira Rose who, like her Grandmommy, loves dolls. In this photo (Christmas 2006) she is sharing the Christmas story with her cousin, Michael. In some small way, around or under or through his obvious enchantment with his handmedownbutreal cell phone, I know that Michael is richer because of Kira’s storytelling.]

Reference:

Izen, Judith (1999). Collector's Guide to Ideal Dolls: Identification & Values (Second Edition). Paducah, KY: Collector Books.

big brother

Little did he know how becoming a big brother would change his life...

Michael and Cassie
July 28, 2006















Cassie's first doll was a gift from her big brother on the day she was born...