I was a telepathic porcelain doll on a quantum shelf in another life in another world.
When I was six years old, my mother bought a beautiful antique doll with thick wavy red hair, deep blue eyes, and a penetrating stare. Mom and I sat at in our tiny Brooklyn, apartment at our big kitchen table, wondering what to name the doll. After several long minutes of pure silence, I looked my mother in the eye, smiled, and said, "Why don't we name her Mary Ann?" My mother turned white and stared at me with a mixed expression of awe, disbelief, and excitement. "Annie," she said quietly, using my nickname, "how did you come up with that name?" I shrugged and said in my squeaky child voice, "I don't know, it just came to me, like it floated in my head." My mother, the skeptic atheist skeptic, composed herself and said, "Because I was thinking that exact name just before you said it out loud." I smiled very widely and said, "Oh, then I read your mind, Mommy! Isn't that fun?"
Nearly a decade later, my mother said that in the 1960s and 1970s, during the height of the New Age movements of those eras, she wished for a daughter with ESP so they could communicate telepathically. Close enough?
Also, this is probably nothing but coincidence, but when I was fifteen, my mother started painting an adult woman with wavy red hair and felt that it might be me, so she began dying my wavy chestnut hair various shades of auburn and dark red until I went to college. Before I was born, she and my father had assumed I would inherit her deep gray-blue eyes. I did inherit the penetrating stare, though.
Anyway, Mary Ann still lives at my parents' house, now in the Hamptons, surrounded by other old dolls, one of which looks exactly like me as a child, who is of course named Annie.
My mother has occasionally admitted to sensing things outside reality, and my father has long been a known psychic, although they both suppressed those skills decades ago. There may be a reason I don't buy antique dolls when I go to thrift stores. It's the eyes. We know each other too well.
Nearly a decade later, my mother said that in the 1960s and 1970s, during the height of the New Age movements of those eras, she wished for a daughter with ESP so they could communicate telepathically. Close enough?
Also, this is probably nothing but coincidence, but when I was fifteen, my mother started painting an adult woman with wavy red hair and felt that it might be me, so she began dying my wavy chestnut hair various shades of auburn and dark red until I went to college. Before I was born, she and my father had assumed I would inherit her deep gray-blue eyes. I did inherit the penetrating stare, though.
Anyway, Mary Ann still lives at my parents' house, now in the Hamptons, surrounded by other old dolls, one of which looks exactly like me as a child, who is of course named Annie.
My mother has occasionally admitted to sensing things outside reality, and my father has long been a known psychic, although they both suppressed those skills decades ago. There may be a reason I don't buy antique dolls when I go to thrift stores. It's the eyes. We know each other too well.
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