The beautiful Raggedy Ann in the dark blue dress is the one who started it all. She was handmade especially for me in 1958 by Caroline Carey, a longtime friend of my mother's. (At the time, my mother was expecting my little sister and Carolyn knew I might need a little extra love before Valerie was born.) I was just a year old when she came into my life, and somehow, almost 7 decades later, she is still here. Her yarn hair may not be quite as perfect as it once was, and her little cloth body carries the gentle signs of a well-loved childhood companion, but to me she has always been beautiful. She isn't simply a doll. She is the keeper of my childhood secrets.
She has been there through so many seasons of my life. She knew the little girl I was before I understood much about the world. She witnessed childhood joys, disappointments, tears, dreams and perhaps a few things I wouldn't want anyone else to know. She never judged me, never interrupted and never told a soul. There is something comforting about an old friend who has been with you for almost your entire life. When I look at her now, I don't just see a Raggedy Ann doll. I see a little girl sitting on the floor with her beloved doll, completely unaware of how quickly the years would pass.
A few years ago, I found another handmade Raggedy Ann and couldn't resist bringing her home. I named her Raggedy Alice. I imagine she was probably made sometime in the late 1960s, and although I don't know the hands that lovingly stitched her together, I like to think someone once loved her as much as I loved my Raggedy Ann. She became a companion to my original girl, and somehow the two of them look as though they were meant to sit together. Raggedy Alice may have joined our family many years after my childhood, but she seems perfectly content to take her place beside her older friend.
Then, just yesterday, another little Raggedy Ann came home with me from a vintage market sale here in Perry, Georgia. She is the smallest of the three, and I immediately knew she needed a name. So Little Annie it was. She was manufactured sometime in the late 1970s, which means she carries her own little bit of history. I have no idea where she has been or who loved her before me, but now she has a new home with two older Raggedy sisters. I have a feeling she is going to fit right in.
And then there is the tiny ceramic Raggedy Ann figurine sitting among them. She was a gift from my youngest daughter, which makes her especially precious to me. She may not have the soft cloth body or yarn hair of the others, but she carries something just as meaningful, the love of a daughter who knew that Raggedy Ann represented something special to her mother.
My love for Raggedy Ann began long before I ever understood the nostalgia I would one day feel for her. As a child, I loved reading the Raggedy Ann and Andy books written by Johnny Gruelle. I could lose myself in those stories, where the world seemed gentler and imagination was always just around the corner. Life seemed simpler then. Childhood wasn't filled with quite so many distractions, and there was something wonderfully sweet about settling down with a book and entering a world where dolls could come alive and adventures could be found in the most ordinary places.
Perhaps that is why these dolls mean so much to me now. They aren't really about dolls at all. They are about time. They remind me of a little girl who once believed in the magic of stories, a mother who had a friend named Caroline Carey who took the time to make a special doll for her daughter, and a childhood that could never be duplicated but can still be remembered.
I sometimes wonder what my Raggedy Ann would say if she could talk. After all, she has had many, many years to collect stories. She has seen me grow from a little girl into a woman, watched the seasons of my life come and go, and remained quietly faithful through it all. She has known things about me that no one else could possibly know. Maybe that's the true gift of childhood treasures. They remember the version of us that the rest of the world has forgotten.
Now the three of them sit together, Raggedy Ann, Raggedy Alice and Little Annie, like old friends gathered around a kitchen table, sharing stories from different generations. One was made for me in 1958, one came into my life decades later, and one arrived just yesterday. Their years are different, their stories are different, but somehow they belong together.
Looking at them takes me back to a simpler time, when a handmade doll could become a lifelong friend and a book could transport a child into another world. It reminds me that some treasures grow more precious with age, not because they become more valuable to everyone else, but because they become more valuable to us.
So I'll keep these three little Raggedy girls close. I'll dust them gently, straighten their dresses and smile every time I walk past them. And somewhere in the quiet of my heart, I know that my original Raggedy Ann is still keeping my secrets. After all, we've been together since I was just a wee one.
Some friendships really do last a lifetime.
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