My mother's doll

My mother received a doll from Santa on Christmas Day, 1938. She was five years old, and the doll was an Ideal Mama-Papa doll. My mother has kept this doll, although the original clothes have long gone away. She loves it, and speaks so fondly of that morning when she first laid eyes on her. On Christmas 2007, I decided to take photos of my mother with her doll, because she doesn't have a photo of herself first playing with the doll coming on seventy years ago. My mother is seventy four in this photo; her doll is sixty nine, and wearing a too-big dress that my mother picked up somewhere, to tide her over until we get some proper clothes made up for her.



And here is my mother's doll, posing for her own portrait:



Both of these photos were taken using my Polaroid sx-70 camera and Time-Zero film (expired). I think it's important to have tokens of our lives, little objects that remind us of our loved ones, special moments, and continuity despite change. I love both of these photos. In the first one, you can see that glint of child-like joy in my mother's eyes. In the second, you can see the traces of play on a well-loved doll, adored by a midwestern girl living through the Depression.