Jemima is not my name: a new beginning

Jemima was my rag doll. From the age of two till six she was pressed under my arm or held in the nook of my elbow. Her hair was a mass of long plaited wool. She was an old-fashioned lass dressed in the usual rag doll attire; a floral flock with petticoat and pantaloons. As I became aware of my girlie parts around the age of six, not wanting her to feel left out, I drew them in on her torso in pen. After four years of being wedged under my arm day and night, a loyal security blanket, she finally went bald.

Jemima is not my name, but she was my first lesson in loyalty and my first experience in heart ache.

She met her fate in an aluminium dust bin with a dented lid when my mother grew sick of her munted face and faint stench. At the time there were no plastic wheelie bins. And I know Jemima would have been happier for being buried in an old fashioned sort of bin.

*

I now plan on being far more loyal to this little place, this blog, called, or not called, Jemima.

Jemima is not my name so I’ll walk the middle road in this here place—a little conversation and some snippets of work might do the trick. I hope it, the conversation, and they, the snippets, fill the quieter moments, yours and mine.