How a Fresno mother’s Christmas doll present for her daughter became a gift to herself

I walked the aisles of Arthur’s Toy Store, searching through the dolls on display, Christmas shopping for my 3-year old daughter. I knew what I wanted — a Madame Alexander doll with brown hair. Arthur’s Toys had recently opened a new store in a new shopping center on north Blackstone in the building now occupied by Whitie’s Pet Shop. If anyone had this doll, it would be Arthur’s.

Yet, row after row I encountered only blond or black or red-haired dolls, or dolls representing various ethnicities. It was, after all, the mid-1970s. The Madame Alexander dolls on display sported various styles of her blond hair. But I needed a brown-haired doll, one with my daughter’s curly locks. When I asked for help, the clerk told me to wait while she went to the storage area upstairs to search.

Fifteen minutes later she returned with a doll in a box, a Madame Alexander doll with curly brown hair and bangs, wearing a blue and white checkered dress, white socks, and white Mary Jane shoes. She was beautiful. I didn’t even ask the price. My little girl would have a doll that looked like herself, one she could rock and sing to and dress and feed, and Santa would deliver it to her.

Over 45 years later, I remember the exhilaration of this shopping trip as if it were yesterday, probably because I never had a doll growing up except for one whose rubber skin had been charred brown. I don’t know how it burned, only that Mrs. Jones, my friend Pam’s mother, had given it to me instead of throwing it away. The doll was the size of a newborn infant. Her head was bald, but it did not matter. I was thrilled to have her.

Pam and I spent many afternoons sitting on the floor in her bedroom sewing doll clothes from scraps of fabric that Mrs. Jones saved for us in shoe boxes. We cut out skirts and blouses and dresses, and hand-stitched all the seams. We became experts at threading needles, knotting thread, and keeping our stitches even, as Mrs. Jones had so patiently demonstrated. My parents didn’t know about my doll or her growing wardrobe because I kept it at the Jones house.

It wasn’t that I didn’t make my desire for a doll known. Every year at Christmas time I sat on Santa Claus’ lap on the Mezzanine level at JC Penny’s in downtown Fresno and asked for a doll. But I never found one under the Christmas tree. Instead, Christmas presents for my sister, brother, and me consisted of sleepwear — every single year. One year, I unwrapped a bathrobe, the next slippers, and then back to unwrapping a bathrobe.

With a child’s enthusiasm and innocence, I tore off the bow and ripped open my Christmas present, though I knew I would not be receiving what I had asked for: no bicycle, no play kitchen, no play sewing machine, and certainly no dolls. Yet, anything new, even a bathrobe or slippers, was better than my older sister’s hand-me-down dresses, skirts, and sweaters that made up my wardrobe. Each year my newly acquired bathrobe or slippers belonged to me, only me.

But my most memorable and surprising Christmas came the year I received roller skates, the kind that one’s shoes slip in, secured with straps and buckles. I might have been 10 by that time. I will never know what motivated my mother and father to make such a purchase. Perhaps I had been whining or begging for roller skates so that I could play with the neighborhood kids who travelled up and down the sidewalk while I watched or ran alongside them. Perhaps my parents could afford the price of roller skates, unlike a bicycle.

I share this history from my childhood, because years later, as a young, working mother, my children’s experiences would be different than mine. Most of us are familiar with the expression, “We buy for others what we really want for ourselves.” My determination to give my daughter a beautiful Madame Alexander doll to cuddle and play with clearly came from my own desires, growing-up with a burned, borrowed doll and few toys.

And she did play with her doll for many years. Her doll had an extensive wardrobe because the baby Onesies I had saved fit her perfectly, along with other dresses my daughter had worn as an infant. Suffice it to say the doll was well used and somewhat worn, her hair flattened against her head.

Eventually, when my daughter became a mother to two little girls, she was not interested in giving them her Madame Alexander doll. Being a sentimentalist, I was surprised at first, but then realized her well-worn, well-used doll could not compare with the new Madame Alexander dolls or even the popular American Girl dolls on the market, the ones that came with their own story books, beauty shops, roller skates, horses, and sports cars.

So I donated the brown haired Madame Alexander doll with a blue and white checkered dress. Hopefully, it found its way to a little girl who needed her.

This story was originally published December 20, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "How a Fresno mother’s Christmas doll present for her daughter became a gift to herself."