The boys were busy in the workroom, when Charlotte appeared in the doorway.
"You have a letter, Emil," Charlotte said. She had a couple of envelopes in her hands.
Charlotte climbed up to sit with the boys and handed Emil one of the envelopes.
Emil looked at the return address. "It’s from Holly," he exclaimed.
Emil always enjoyed hearing from his friend Holly, whom he had met in the doll hospital before he came to live with us. She often wrote him a letter and he wrote her back.
"What does she say?" Billy asked, as Emil looked at the letter.
"She says she watched the Doll Winter Games on TV," Emil replied. "She got to see Jolena's runs. She says she and Sam clapped their hands for Jolena. They thought she did a great job."
Sam is the real little girl Holly lives with. Sam and Holly both use wheelchairs to get around. Emil read for a bit. "Holly says a friend of hers is in the Special Doll Winter Games!" he said.
The dolls knew that the Special Doll Winter Games are held after the regular ones, and that these games are for dolls who can't see or need to use a wheelchair to get around, or have some other problem that makes it unfair for them to have to compete with dolls who don't have any of these challenges to deal with. They can still have fun and work on skills that can be useful to them in other ways.
"The events are a lot like the regular ones," Emil explained, "except that they have been reworked to allow dolls like her friend to participate."
"Does Holly know that Jolena has been helping with the Special Doll Winter Games?" asked Charlotte.
"Yes," Emil replied. "I told her all about it when I wrote to say she was in the Doll Winter Games."
Jolena had stayed behind when most of her team members had gone home. She was the partner of a doll who couldn’t see to ski. The two dolls have helmets with built-in headsets, so they can communicate. Jolena skies in front of the other doll, telling her what she needs to do to ski the course. Jolena and her partner had placed 6th in the event. They were both pleased with having done so well.
Holly has been playing wheelchair basketball with a doll team where she lives.
Now she's thinking about signing up to learn to use a special ski sledge to play ice hockey. She says the game is a lot like basketball, so it shouldn’t take too long to learn it, once she has learned to get around on the ice with her special sled.
"That’s all," Emil said. "She just says to tell everyone hello for her, and to let Jolena know she had been watching and thought she did great."
"What else is in the mail?" Billy asked, when Emil was done with Holly's letter. "You brought two letters."
Charlotte picked up the other letter she had brought with her. It was already open. "Oh, yes!" She exclaimed. "The Writer wanted me to show this to everyone." She carefully removed the letter from its envelope as the boys looked on.
"The Writer said it’s from Lina," Charlotte explained. "She's a real human girl in Germany where they speak German. She says that this girl has a family of dolls like us. She started using our stories to help her learn English."
"The Writer told me she’s one of our biggest fans!" Charlotte exclaimed, clearly excited. Well, the boys could tell she was excited. Can you tell?
"The letter is in English," Billy noted.
The three dolls read the letter to themselves, the two boys each looking over Charlotte's shoulder.
When Charlotte sensed that they were all finished with the first page, she put it behind the second one, so they could read that one.
"I didn’t notice any mistakes," Emil said when they had all finished reading.
"It’s written by hand, too," Charlotte pointed out. "In ink! You can’t even erase if you make a mistake! That's a real challenge!"
"You don’t have Autocorrect, either," Billy pointed out. "That means you have to know how to spell all the words. If you don't know, you have to look them up in the dictionary."
"You know what I like best about the letter?" Emil asked. The other two dolls looked at him, expectantly.
"What I like best," Emil said quietly, "is that she likes our books. That’s why she was writing. She likes them, and she uses them and our stories to learn to do something that's a challenge for her."
All three dolls had to think about that. It made them feel very important. A real human girl who lives halfway around the world took the time to write and say she is enjoying the books. "It’s fun to get a letter from Holly," Emil said, "but getting a letter from a real human person is very special!"
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
Photo of hockey sled/sledge from Mobility Sports.
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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Copyright © 2022 by Peggy Stuart
