The strange disappearances of Jo-Jo

Over on Fairymix, Babaloo has bought herself a teddy bear. It's to replace one she had as a child. You can't help but start thinking back to your own childhood when you read a post like that.

I still have some books from my childhood--the Little House books, Sally Watson's "Witch of the Glens," a great little book called "Mudpies and Other Recipes," that I worked my way through diligently, some of Noel Streatfeild's "Shoe" books. But I don't have any toys. No teddy bears or dolls. Which means that I don't have my favorite rag doll, Jo-Jo.

You can see her in the picture above. Unlike a teddy bear, she'd be impossible to replace on ebay; my aunt Iny made her for me. I named her after myself--Jo is my middle name--and she became a part of me.

Jo-Jo and I went everywhere together. To bed, out to the yard, through mud puddles. She was not washable; she would have fallen apart. And eventually (I am told), she got pretty dirty. She started to stink.

My mother has always been a practical and non-sentimental sort. She decided that Jo-Jo's time was up; she had to go.

Her opportunity came one summer afternoon. I had left Jo-Jo on the kitchen floor and gone off to another part of the house. Trish tiptoed off to check on me; I was deeply distracted in a game with my brothers, she tells me (I do not remember any of this myself), and quite far away from the kitchen.

So she seized the moment.

She picked up Jo-Jo, tiptoed out the back door, walked over to the garbage can, quietly lifted the lid, and placed my doll on top.

Then she went back to the kitchen and started cooking dinner.

About fifteen or twenty minutes later, the story goes, I came into the kitchen. I didn't say a word. I walked right past my mother, out the back door, over to the garbage can, lifted the lid, took out Jo-Jo, walked back into the house, walked right past my mother, and disappeared into the bowels of the house.

I never said a word.

Jo-Jo and I were together for another six months or so, and then, as I'm told, she got lost in the move from Kentucky to Missouri to Duluth.

That's my mother's story, and she's sticking to it.