it comforts us to stand this close together

Everywhere we went we saw these dolls dressed in folk outfits. I remember getting some when I was a little girl. My grandfather, who lived in Prague, must have walked past the same stores 45 years ago and thought: Hey, I'll send my 3 little grandchildren some Czech dolls, won't that be fun? Actually, they were the "you can't play with that doll". The doll was stored away somewhere and not until after my mother died did I even get the doll.

I have the doll my mother played with when she was a girl in Rouen France. There is some real human hair worked on the doll's head... we always thought someone must have put the hair on there for her. Was it her hair? Her mothers? We don't know. This is what happens when everyone in your family is dead. Lots of mysteries.