THE NANA DOLLS
“…beginning when I was five, she made me a doll every year.”
With five children, my mother always had her hands full, which is why, as a young girl, I savored the summer weeks I spent with her parents, my Nana and Papa. Their house, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, was quiet and uncrowded. No one else vying for their attention. In the morning Nana served me soft-boiled eggs in pretty, light blue cups. At night we watched Mannix or I Dream of Jeannie or Lawrence Welk and Nana made snacks—tea sandwiches or pigs in blankets.
With Nana I had my first sip of coffee and my first milkshake. She was on a bowling team and let me keep score. She volunteered at a home for the disabled and brought me along on visits. She made me the first bellbottoms I ever owned, paired with a scalloped-edge crop top that she made, too. And beginning when I was five, she made me a doll every year. The first was this one, Mary, as in "Had a Little Lamb.” And she did have a lamb—Nana made sure!—but I lost it somewhere along the way.
Mary, lambless, now lives on a shelf in my study alongside her doll cousins, also made by Nana: Alice (as in Wonderland), Pocahontas, and Little Women’s Jo. When I look at them, I remember what it was to be very young and beloved and always protected, to feel like I was on grown-up adventures and nothing could ever go wrong.
—Leigh Haber
Leigh Haber was for ten years director of Oprah’s Book Club and is now a freelance writer, editor and publishing strategist.