The usual bemusement

After making a doll I often put her somewhere I can see her easily for a few days and every time I enter her room I catch myself wincing with self consciousness. I've really struggled with why I make dolls as if it mattered. I wonder if my time couldn't be better spent.

I've been working on "Monica" on and off for the past couple of weeks. I made the nest first, then I found a head in my head collection and played with that for awhile, painting, adding features with paper clay, sanding, painting over it again, adding layers of paper, etc. While the head was still being made, I made the arms and legs, alternating tasks until all the components came together at about the same time. This is my usual process and the doll (her personality) occupies a good portion of my thought while she's coming into being. While I drive, while I sew, as I make dinner, I find myself (how can I say this without seeming weird?) praying about her and just trying to listen quietly for a way to her completion. I'm often surprised by her appearance when she is finished, like a new mother might say to her baby "well that's what you look like!" The process is what's important to me, the human issues I contemplate during the making of the doll.

Incidentally St. Monica was the mother of St. Augustine, and the wife of Patritius. She was always praying for the souls of her son and husband, as they were bad-asses, both of them. They both became Christians eventually, so her prayers were answered before she died, but not without a lot of heartache. I have a friend who recently told me about Monica and she has captured my imagination for the last month or so. As I was making this doll I considered the struggle of many women who want their loved ones to be a certain way (or healthy, or on the right path, whatever), and all the mental energy which goes into fretting about them. A mom tends to entrench herself in her nest, her family life, the role of a 'good wife and mother', and yet sometimes she can do no more than pray, hope and wish for her people to find their own way and become whole human beings, just as the mother herself is on that same road.

The making of a doll can be like having kids for all the wrong reasons, or playing god. I feel a little bit guilty about that. Here sits Monica, my little nest doll with her two little worrisome eggs in her lap. I feel for her, I wish she could move on and fly away, but alas that will never happen. While the process was cathartic for me, she is forever stuck in the moment. She is a reflection of me and my thoughts during a certain period of time, but I can always go do something else and she can't. Too bad.