While other little girls purchased their dolls at the store I found mine after a heavy night of rain and strong winds. I was only six years old at the time and I wondered if my doll had magically found its way to me or rode the wind like a kite landing in our yard. When I found it, my father and I were sweeping leaves on our front porch. It was a bright early morning and right at that moment I saw something laying on the ground.

At first I thought it was a dead animal, so I poked it with my broom a couple of times till the leaves fell off. To my surprise it was a doll laying helplessly on the dirty floor with its stuffing sticking out of its shoulder and belly. It looked like a rag, all dirty and wet. I quickly ran to its rescue scooping it up from the floor and covered it with my gown. Poor thing had big brown eyes and was big enough to be mistaken for a real baby. I took it inside to my mother.

At first she was a bit skeptical about me keeping it, but she finally agreed when she realised how much I wanted to keep the doll. My mother washed it and stitched it up. I even went as far as waiting by the washing line to watch it dry and every time my mother called me to come inside paranoia would creep up on me making me think someone might just come and steal it from me.

I instantly became attached to it and when it came to my play dates I was always the envy of every little girl in our neighborhood. My doll might not cost much, he was never like those modern day dolls with built in batteries or a steep price tag, but for what it’s worth he became priceless and a possession of great sentimental value to me. I named him Abdul and I have been cuddling him every single night for the past 19 years.

As strange as it may seem for an almost 24 year old, young woman to own a doll, this doll is special to me. It’s more than plastic and stuffing and it became more than just a doll for me to dress up over the years.

If he could speak, he would talk about the times he gave me comfort when I was being bullied in primary school. He would bear witness to the number of times I held him tight when I had nightmares. He would profess to the amount of tears he soaked up throughout my young adult heartbreaks. He would and brag about the unbreakable bond between us.