Of dolls and such.

Since I was a little girl I've always been curious , wideeyed and sometimes reckless. I remember once when it was a bright sunny normal afternoon and mum wasn't home, I decided to attempt to reach the highest point of my cupboard where my dolls had been kept.

Mum had kept them there because she said I had to play with the old rickerty broken dolls first, they were akin to the hand-me-downs that my cousins did not want. Mum said the new dolls were meant to be given away, so I could never unwrap them from their boxes nor could I touch them.

On that fateful day I tried to reach the cupboard, but a normal chair was not enough. So I had an idea, I decided to pile a stack of chairs together. But to my dismay, they would not hold either. I fell a few times from the bravado and landed with a few bruises. But that did not deter me from trying. In the end I decided to pile a chair and place a huge plastic basin where there were all layers of thin mattresses inside them.

What I did not know was those were mattresses used for ironning and beneath those mattresses lurked an innocent iron. I did not realize that there was an iron there nor that it had just been used so it was still scorching hot. So, in my precipitated enthusiasm to get a glimpse of those pretty new barbie dolls, mark, a glimpse was all I wanted since I wasn't allowed to unwrap them, I got into trouble.

I remember I dipped my ignorant feet inside that mound of mattresses and before I could register anything I fell from the shock of the heat of the iron when I slipped and I ended up that day on the floor. The chair was upturned and my arm and leg were scalded by the merciless iron. A few times too because my little body had been entangled with the insulated wired appliance. I guess I gave up the notion of looking at my dolls for a while but it wasn't for long before I decided to try again. Without the iron of course, but I realized it wasn't high enough.

And then I forgot about it and stopped trying. And as you would have it, time naturally passed and I grew taller. But by then was too old to play with dolls.  I forgot to try reaching the super impossibly high cupboard though. Well, at least I became fonder of other things, like reading and playing tennis, the piano.

Now and then when I see dolls, there is still a pang in my heart. I know it's a silly thing but I would still have images of that silly little person trying in vain to tip toe and reach only to fall over, again and again. The point is, it's just falling down, little bruises and burns. How remarkably difficult it becomes when life deals us a little more than those things. :)

However, Obama's dream into reality teaches me/us that no matter how tough, there is still hope shinning through and as long as there is life, there is hope. Life is what we make of it. :)

I guess what I'm really trying to say is, even after I grew taller, could have tried reaching the impossible height from time to time, I did not. Because I remembered the pain of the iron and the cuts and bruises that I forgot what I wanted to look for. I just look back on the memory and every doll I still see with this pang. But oh how much there really is in life is there to feel hopeful and optimistic. We can never ever be beaten by anything except ourselves.