As a very young child 80 years ago I had no toys. It was all my parents could do, as immigrants to the country to cope with trying to put food on the table, working in factories in low-wage employment. When I was very young a Catholic group offered daycare to the indigent population living in Toronto and I dimly recall feeling estranged and alienated even at that young age in the presence of nuns, however good their intentions.

I do remember that I wanted to have a doll. I had no playmates but I imagine I thought if I had a doll I would have a companion I could talk to. Something of my own. And dolls, I thought, were beautiful. I wanted a beautiful doll, the vision of which in its porcelain glory and elegant clothing would fulfill a strongly-held need. My parents were not emotionally demonstrative, likely because they themselves were deprived as children born in Russia and Poland of poor Jewish stock.

I remember a visitor who came to see my parents once brought along a gift for their-then only child, and it was a doll that looked exactly as I imagined it would. A large doll, it wasn't meant for a child's plaything, but rather it was a show-piece, and I adored it. Not for long. It was in my possession for mere hours; the evening it was presented until I went to bed. In the morning it was gone, and I never knew why, and what had become of it.To my upset questioning my parents feigned ignorance.

When I was older, around five, I was given a tricycle. My father demonstrated how it worked, for me, and I rode it around the street until bullies took it from me, and my father insisted that I confront them myself and demand its return. I was too fearful. There was hostility among the deprived populations living in poverty in Toronto back then, expressed toward Jews and I became accustomed to being accused of being a Christ-killer. I imagine my father feared confronting a hostile neighbour.
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Even before I began to attend kindergarten at the school across from where my parents rented several rooms on the second floor of a house owned by another family, I was allowed to wander the neighbourhood, make my way into the schoolyard, hoping to see other children, wanting to have a friend.

There was a little Japanese girl when I finally started school who lived across the street, and what I found different about her was her teeth, which were entirely rotted and dark. At that time deprived children were given breakfast and lunch at schools, were able to take showers at school, had nurses and dentists coming around regularly to check their health.

The little girl once invited me to her home when her parents were absent, confiding in me that she was going to share something special with me, and I wasn't to tell anyone. The something special were festival dolls brought out only at special times of the year. She looked about in a dark cupboard and withdrew several boxes. In them were dolls that bore no resemblance whatever to my fixed idea of what a desirable doll should look like. I must have conveyed my disappointment to the little girl; I can't recall ever being with her again.

And then, a lifetime later I lived for a year in Japan. By then I knew the significance of dolls as cultural artifacts with value inherent in their production, purpose and ornamentation based on heritage and custom. And I went out in search of them and was rewarded by finding many old dolls that had been produced for special occasions and had special meaning, and were linked to historical events. They were made of variant materials that in themselves described their meaning and purpose.

And, finally, as a mature woman I was given the opportunity by a turn in my life to acquire a number of significant dolls -- perhaps as a metaphor for a young child yearning for elusive human contact and finding none, accepting the presence of carefully made replicas of human beings reflecting the versatility of human culture -- satisfying my acquisitive streak.

In  the process discovering about myself the reality that I am a withdrawn individual, basically introverted and certainly not given to easy friendship and a circle of friends.