Pauly watched Charlotte and Emil go in through the front door to the house. "Why does Emil wear that saucer on his head?" he asked.
"It isn't a saucer," Pippa told him. "It's sort of a hat."
"But it isn't the hat he usually wears," Pauly pointed out.
"He has three hats,I think," she said. "A doll can have more than one hat."
"I know his regular hat is like mine," Pauly said, taking his hat off.
"Yes," Pippa said. "That type of hat is called a ball cap, and Emil and Billy both have them, just like you. Girls wear them, too!"
Pauly had never seen Billy and Emil wear their winter hats, so he didn't know about them.
Pauly only had one hat to wear, so he thought that was all a doll needed. "We wear hats on our heads," he said, "and each of us only has one head."
"Lots of dolls have more than one hat," Pippa told him. "It's like the way you have several shirts and sweaters to wear." Pippa tugged on her sweater for emphasis. "If you don't have two heads, you only wear one hat at a time, the way you wear only one shirt at a time if you only have one body, although you can put a sweater or sweatshirt or jacket over it if it's cold."
Pauly tried to imagine a doll with two heads and one body or one head but two bodies. It was difficult, but dolls come with good imaginations.
"You have other pants to wear, too," Pippa pointed out, "and pajamas to sleep in, and you have three pairs of shoes."
Pauly wondered how Pippa knew he had pajamas. He never wore them to Pippa's house. He decided that she just assumed (uh-SOOMD) he had pajamas, because she had pajamas to sleep in. Don't all dolls have pajamas to sleep in?
"Well," Pauly said, "I've never seen Emil wear that hat before. In fact...I don't think I've ever seen anyone wear a hat like that."
"In fact," Pauly continued, before Pippa could get a word in, which he had learned meant you had to keep talking, "I don't think I've even seen a hat like that in a picture!"
Pauly likes books, and he had seen a lot of pictures in them, but this was something new for him, and something new was always interesting.
"Emil just about always wears that hat when he goes to the synagogue (SIN-uh-gog)," Pippa said matter-of-factly, as if she knew all about it. "That's where they've been," she added.
When Pauly just gave her a blank stare, Pippa wanted to roll her eyes, but she remembered that Pauly hadn't been around all that long, so he didn't have her vast knowledge of the world, and she didn't want to hurt his feelings, because she's a kind doll, and Pauly is her very best friend.
"That's where they go to learn about God," Pippa explained.
"So it's a church," Pauly suggested. "But this is Saturday! Jeffy goes to church on Sunday. He took me along to Sunday School one time."
"Yes, sort of," Pippa agreed. "Only they––Emil and Charlotte––usually go to the synagogue on Saturday. Mariah goes to the mosque (MOSK) on Friday, and the rest of us go to church on Sunday."
"You can go with us sometime, if you like," Pippa suggested, "if it's OK with Jeffy. We go to the doll church, of course," she added. "I'm sure Jeffy took you to the human people church."
"I didn't see any other dolls there," Pauly agreed, "so it must have been the human people church." Jeffy had taken Pauly to his school once for something called "show-and-tell," and it was sort of like that, only he remembered that there were more grownup human people at the church.
Pauly kept wanting to get back to Emil's hat, though. "So why does he wear that hat when he goes to the synagogue?" (He was enjoying his new word. He wanted to say it a lot, so it would be part of his doll brain.)
Pippa didn't know the answer to that. Now that Pauly brought it up, she was curious. "Let's go ask!" she suggested.
The two dolls got up from the front steps and went into the house.
Emil and Charlotte were in the living room, talking to Mandy, who was knitting something very big. They noticed when the two smaller dolls came in.
Pippa and Pauly climbed up on the big piece of furniture that was always in front of the sofa. It wasn't a table and it wasn't a chair, but something in-between. (Pippa thought it was called an auto-something, but it had nothing to do with cars, that she could see.) "We were wondering something, Emil," Pippa said right away. "We noticed that you always wear that funny, I mean, strange, I mean unusual hat whenever you go to the synagogue. Why is that?"
"The funny hat is a kippah (KIH-puh)," Emil told them, taking it off so they could see it.
"I don't have to wear it, but it's a tradition (truh-DIH-shun) for human boys and men to wear a kippah in the synagogue. We dolls like to try strange and new things, but we also like to take part in traditions, because human people do."
"It's like how we always read together on Christmas Eve," Emil said.
"We read books we like, but we always include The Night Before Christmas. That's a tradition with us," Mandy explained.
"Christmas?" asked Pauly. "Christmas Eve?"
"That's right!" Pippa exclaimed. "You weren't here for Christmas last year! You're going to love it, but don't worry if a tree suddenly appears in your living room!"
The older dolls were trying to think of another example of a tradition for Pauly, one he would have experienced already.
"I know!" Mandy exclaimed. "We in the United States have a big celebration for Independence Day on July 4th! We've done that since you came to live with Jeffy. It's a set holiday, but remember how Jeffy's mother put the flag up in that holder in the front of the house? That's a tradition. Some people put a flag out every day, if that's their tradition, but most of us do that for special holidays."
"We did that, too," Charlotte explained. "In fact, even having a flag is a tradition. That's a tradition in all countries around the world. Each country has its own flag design."
"Remember the fireworks?" Emil asked Pauly. "That's a tradition where we live. We always have fireworks on July 4th!"
"Yes!" Pauly exclaimed. That was something he really remembered well. Jeffy's mother had let them stay up late to watch out of the upstairs window. They had turned off the lights, so they could see the night sky better. The loud sounds had scared him at first, but Jeffy had told him that was part of the fun.
"When we do something because human people have done it for a long time, it's a tradition," Mandy said.
"Some traditions," Charlotte put in, "are shared around the world, and some are just traditions for your family, like our tradition of sitting together by the fire on the last evening of the year and talking about what happened that year. We always do that."
"Having turkey for Thanksgiving dinner," called out Jolena from the kitchen doorway, "with stuffing and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie." She must have heard the conversation while she was cooking.
The little doll chef disappeared again into the kitchen, so she must have had something on the stove.
"Trick-or-treat on Halloween!" Charlotte added. "That will be soon!"
"You're going to love Halloween, Pauly!" Pippa cried. "Just wait! Children get dressed up in costumes and go from house to house, asking for candy. Some human people decorate their houses to look scary, but it's all in fun."
"What's the most fun," Mandy put in, "is The Writer sometimes dresses a couple of us up in costumes and puts us in the front hall, where children can see us. When children come to the door, she tells them we were the first trick-or-treaters, and look what she did to us! She made us tiny. It always makes them laugh."
"Having a cake with a candle at your birthday!" Charlotte said. "That's a tradition."
"Um..." Pauly began, "this is a lot to remember! Should I be taking notes?"
"Don't worry about it," Mandy assured him. "Just enjoy the fun. After a while, you'll remember all of these things."
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"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.
<a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/19832501/?claim=j3fj3mbb8kt">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>
Copyright © 2022 by Peggy Stuart
No comments:
Post a Comment