When I would pull out my dolls as a child, my sister Joni and I were very elaborate and detailed in our play. We would pretend to go to the grocery store or to the bank with our babies. We would take our dolls to church and role play where one of us was the chorister and the other was the primary president. Other dolls and teddy bears sat along the edge of the bed and would fill up the make-shift primary room. Songs were sung and lessons were taught. Later we would sit on our pretend pew for sacrament meeting and quiet our fussy children and sometimes even have to get up and leave because of their disruptive crying.
As fun as big dolls were it was paper dolls that allowed us the most creativity. Just to help you understand, our paper dolls were nothing ordinary! We would cut from the thick Sears catalogue huge families. If you found a beautiful mom-looking model in the bathing suit section we certainly could find her in the dress section, the leisure wear section and even in the wedding dress section. We flipped through the dense catalogue in the same way searching for husbands and dads. Inevitably, the man was well dressed, donned with perfect hair and had a leather jacket thrown casually over his shoulder. For children we could cut out whole birthday parties and picnics. We could find school supplies, bicycles, and toys. For baby we clipped out mobiles, cribs and high chairs. It made it so fun to switch out "cooking mom" and replace her with a "smart looking pantsuit wife" so she could be ready to go out with the husband with his "face turned just right to catch the perfect square of his jawline" ( jacket still slung over his shoulder) for a romantic date. Visually everything made sense.
Now I find that everything needs to be visual for me. When my kids left home to go to college I had difficulty placing them somewhere else. All I could imagine was my studying Rachel, a joking and silly Jenna or a working, smiling Carly within the confines of our own home. When I viewed their dorm rooms, their friends and their routines I could finally visually place them. It all made sense again. When Rachel graduated from BYU in 2008 I knew where she worked and that she designed flowers for weddings and funerals but I had no visual point of reference. It was a year later, as I stood in the back room where she worked her floral design magic, that I found her again.
Now Rachel lives in Boston; a city I have never seen. I haven't had the privilege of seeing her apartment, her drive to work or her co-workers, her church building, her roommate or the family that cared for her when she moved to Bean-town nearly a year ago. When she tells me she is sitting in her room or out on her porch I feel lost...where is she exactly? When I hear the drawer in her kitchen rattle with the utensils I can't place which drawer or what side of the kitchen she is standing on. It makes me miss her more because without a discernible image I feel she is lost.
This has been on my mind so much lately that I have come to a clear conclusion. I need to see her darling face and sparkling eyes soon. Only then will I envision her in her place and in my mind. Then can I fully grasp and enjoy the beauty of her life in her new world.
Hang on Rachel...I'm coming!!
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