January 27, 2015

A chronic mover, I’ve thought a lot about the things I’ve kept, packed, unpacked and re-packed.
Some of my keepable items make sense — photo albums, coffee maker, packing boxes. But I’ve held on to a few others for reasons that yield more sentiment than sense. Like the chipped ceramic bowl given to me by a close friend. Or the brass anniversary clock whose pendulum rotates only when placed at just the right angle on a sunny day. “Gee Gee,” our adopted family caregiver who has since passed, gave this to me so it’s a keeper.
I get this from my mother, Nel Yeary. Now 89 years old, mom’s health has mandated a season of downsizing, but she has clung to one special item she will not part with.
Mom grew up in an impoverished setting, a repercussion from the Great Depression. Electricity, plumbing and secure shelter were considered luxuries for her family.
The actress Shirley Temple was popular when mom was a little girl. Temple rose to fame at the tender age of 6 when she starred in “Bright Eyes,” a film designed for her talents of singing, dancing and being adorable. She was mom’s peer, just two years younger, and inspired little girls across the world with her iconic innocence.
The Shirley Temple doll, complete with tight-brown curls and a red polka dot tulle dress, was all the rage. Mom wanted one so badly. She said she would walk by the department store and look at the doll in the window.
“Oh my goodness! What I wouldn’t give to have that doll,” she’d often say. But she knew a doll wasn’t an option for her family who could barely afford the basic staples of living.
She also knew college was out of the question. Instead, she used her high school straight-A smarts to work part-time at different jobs while raising a family of four daughters and helping my father, a World War II vet, to start and grow his construction business.
I was her youngest daughter, and when I reached high school, mom earned her real estate license and thrived. By my senior year, she earned her real estate broker’s license at 57 years old.
She also received a gift from Dad to celebrate: her very own Shirley Temple doll.
He ordered it from a catalog and cautioned her to keep it in the box to preserve its value. Mom tore that box open like a kid on Christmas morning and placed her doll in its stand on the dining room buffet for all to see.
The doll has been with mom through many changes — owning a real estate agency, watching her daughters pave their own paths, enjoying grandchildren (who would carefully play with the doll under mom’s careful eye), managing dad’s chronic illness and passing, and, eventually, facing her own illness and subsequent move from her home to assisted living.
Shirley the doll has been with her through it all.
Shirley the woman redefined her life, moving from child star to an accomplished diplomat including service as the United States Ambassador to Ghana. She underplayed her impact as an actress, saying, “People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog and a little girl.”
Mom fell in love with what Shirley Temple meant to her — someone full of life, hope and the promise of something good and pure. Her dimpled doll holds command on the top of a bookshelf near her bed. Though fragile in the twilight of her life, mom looks up with knowing clarity, smiling with bright eyes.
And remembers.