Today, I learned about dolls.
China dolls. German and French-made dolls.
I sat at a care center and thumbed through a quarterly publication for doll collectors. Pat, the member I was visiting, has photos of her dolls interspersed with photos of her family members tacked on the bulletin board in her room. She has hundreds of dolls. She used to go to doll conventions. She’s moving out of the care center at the end of this week, and moving in with her daughter and son-in-law.
Are you ready to move?, I asked.
I’m excited to see my dolls, she replied. You’ll have to come visit and see them. If only you could shrink to doll size then you could stay even longer and play.
We learned about the bleuette doll specifically. I read captions to photos of the doll from the collector’s magazine but lots of the words were in French, as bleuette dolls were made in France for French girls.
Oh, Pat, I don’t speak French, I said as I found French words in front of me.
Congratulations, you’ve just started to learn, was her reply.
She’s funny. And as I left I told her she was a blessing and a joy. She made my [long] day.
there's no place like gnome. 
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