Meant to Be Mine

Reprinted courtesy of Guideposts Magazine.


Summer 1947

Cowbells clinked on the door as Grandma and I entered the secondhand store not far from my grandparents' farm near Greeley, Colorado, where I was visiting the summer I was 5 years old. The sign outside said Junk, but to my grandma and me this place was a gold mine, packed floor to ceiling with woolen quilts, old records, and boxes of who-knew-what, its musty smell alone the stuff of promises.

"Mornin'," Grandma said to the lady inside. "We'll just be a-lookin'."

Moving sideways through the crammed aisles, I stopped for a moment to admire a chipped pomegranate sugar bowl. "Keep an eye out for something that doesn't belong here," Grandma hinted. "Something of value to you."

Eventually we wound our way back to the front of the store, and Grandma gave the junk lady 25 cents for a big box of buttons. "Thank ya," she said, repositioning the rhinestone-lined comb securing the pile of hair atop her head.

That's when I saw the doll. Her cloth body slumped against a book, her head tipped slightly to one side. But her eyes--her bark-brown eyes--gazed directly at me. I knew she was meant to be mine.

"Grandma," I said, "I want that doll more than anything." I pointed to her. "That one, there on the shelf."

"Costs fifteen cents," the junk lady said. She reached for the doll and held it up for Grandma's inspection. A whimper came from the doll. "The crier doesn't work right," the junk lady added. "She cries every time you move her."

And how often had that been? I wondered. Moved from place to place, probably, with no one to love her for very long. I guess her crier didn't work right. It was worn out from crying.

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