Fearlessly Made

A doll, a touch, a love song

I don’t know why I decided to make the doll. My body was hurting — sharp pain all through my pelvis, my legs, my back. I was finding it hard to do anything other than be a body. I could feel myself, huge and complicated. I’ve lived my whole life with chronic dysfunction that means my body doesn’t quite work the way it should do, that means it does many confusing, alarming things. It leaves me very lost at times. It holds me alone in a space, a form, that I struggle to relate to. I think I wanted to try and reconnect with what a body was, to try and remember, and so I cut out torso, limbs, head, and laid them on the bed next to me.

The pattern¹ said ‘tiny doll’ and that is what she was. I made my stitches so small and neat, they soon disappeared into the pale flesh of her. I sewed her inside out then carefully pushed each flat limb through until it was smooth and slender. My giant hands held her, coaxed her into shape, gently pushed stuffing down her length, until she felt solid, until she felt alive. The more I sewed, the more I trembled, with love, with tenderness, with power — the power I held over this fragile little thing. When it came time to stitch up the final, small gap between her legs, I could hardly bear the intimacy of it. She fit perfectly in the cradle of one palm and I held her and held her, looking at her, feeling all this, trying to work out what on earth it was doing to me. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” I found myself saying, remembering the phrase, realising the untruth of it. There was no fear here, in this new, fresh thing. We are wonderfully made, simply. The fear happens later. The fear is all ours. The fear is what gets added on.

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The doll lay on my dressing table, still naked, bald and faceless, as I packed my bag for hospital. She lay on her back on a little quilt I had made recently that happened to fit her perfectly. The pain had gotten much, much worse. My bladder was swollen and bleeding and although these sorts of things are often business as usual for my body, the doctor wanted to check that nothing new was happening. I was being shipped off urgently to the big hospital for scans and tests. I felt bad leaving the doll so exposed but there was no time, no time. I touched her stomach softly as I left, right where it hurt.

Surgical Assessment is one big waiting room. There is a lot of waiting. For obs, for doctor consultations, for bloods, for scans and tests, for follow-ups with the consultant, for pain relief. If they run out of time on the first day and you’re stable enough, they’ll send you home with the condition that you’ll return the next day, at 8 am sharp, and so for a long day and a half, Fraser and I sat against the wall near the door and, slowly, I familiarised myself with the other bodies here waiting for care. 

A young blonde woman sat with her mother, heads bent together over a shared phone, their lips both warped and plump with new fillers. A wild-haired old man, his face gaunt and a bright jaundice yellow, sat in slippers, bewildered and muttering, clutching the carrier bag of medication that the paramedic had handed him as they left. A young, handsome couple sat awkwardly side by side, him serious and uncomfortable, her flame-haired and fussing, turning to try to put an arm round him only for him to stiffen and pull away, until she gave up to sit with her arms crossed in silence. A pair of graceful women in black headscarves signed quietly to each other in the corner, one periodically sipping from a huge, bucket-like water canteen. A man covered in tattoos read a murder mystery. Another about my dad’s age shuffled in, wincing, gasping, his frightened wife leading him to a chair, his soft moans carrying over the sound of the daytime television that every plastic chair had been pointed towards.

Names were called briskly. We each left and returned again. I lay on my back in side rooms, time and time again, a sheet of paper cloth draped over my naked parts as I was gently and good-humouredly scanned, prodded, entered, pricked, touched. I thought of the doll as I lay there, trying to breathe slow and relaxed, trying not to clench or withdraw from these unfamiliar hands, these cold, impersonal instruments. I pointed my toes the way my doll’s pointed. I stretched out my palms. Surrender. Surrender. “I am fearlessly and wonderfully made,” I corrected in a whisper when the doctor left. 

Back in the waiting room, the man who made me think of my father was rigid with pain and distress, his wife casting panicked eyes around for help. I wheeled myself over in my wheelchair and offered to sit with him while she went to talk to the doctor and she fled, gratefully. “Hi, I’m Josie, I’m going to sit with you so you’re not alone,” I said, helplessly, as he gasped out his thanks between clenched teeth, trying to tell me his story. I stroked his hard, old hand and he gripped fiercely back as I tried not to cry, trying to make my face a mask of confidence and reassurance, feeling entirely out of my depth but relieved, oh so relieved to touch someone here at last, because that is all I’d wanted to do all day, to reach a hand out to all these bodies around me and hold them just a little.

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Two days later, back home, the all-clear given plus a box of drugs to ease my way through, the doll waited. I tenderly stitched her a face and I thought of the women with their lip fillers. I cut up old tights to make her a tight wrap of hair and thought of the women in their headscarves. I thought of the man who looked like my father. I wondered how they were all doing. There: now the doll looked like me. I stitched tiny, delicate drawers and a shift and I dressed her. It was only once she was finally covered, dignified, still in my hand, that I felt tears in my eyes. I don’t really know why. I think I was just so relieved for us both, relieved that we both had someone to care for us, relieved we were OK. My body was fine. My body was still strong. 

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In the days that followed, I carefully made a dress, an apron, a tiny pair of shoes, one after another. Once she was finished, I felt some kind of power diminish. It was so strange, as if the more respectable and normal I made her, the more she went to sleep. The doll lies half-forgotten now, dozing on her quilt, my mind on other things, but I thought of her again this morning as I sat to write at my usual table at the community centre.

I came here this morning to be around other bodies. Time in the hospital was tiring, but it still ended up giving me something that I crave and so I’ve gravitated here to the similarly-built, similar-feeling community centre often since, to the smell of hot dinners and bright polyester dresses, to the elderly guests with their summer skin sagging, to the staff I know by name and the steady calls of “Mornin’ Frank!” and “See ya Pat!”, the bright hoots of laughter, the clickclack of sticks and walking frames across the floor being swept by the cleaner who’s still sporting her long, polished holiday nails. 

It is Friday and that means the local folk with Parkinsons are here doing exercise in the side-room. They swing their arms, their bodies shaking, their smiles wide. A group of visually-impaired older gentlemen with white hair and white sticks have just bought a whole round cake from the counter to eat between them. When I walked to the toilet, careful on my unsteady legs, I passed a physio I remembered from the clinic who had helped me some years ago when I was finding it particularly difficult to walk. She smiled at me, unremembering, my face forgotten in a vast sea of other bodies she has coaxed, encouraged, helped.

My teenage son is coming to join me here soon. His lanky, wirey body will be the youngest and strongest thing here. We’ll eat the lunch that the lunch ladies have made — something with baked beans and crisp, greasy chips — and we’ll pile the dirty plates on cheap trays along with the remains of all the cups of tea I’ve been passed throughout the morning. He’ll help me home again and then I will sleep, my tired, sore bones resting, satisfied, these words written, these words I’ve been holding inside me like blood. Perhaps I will tuck the doll beside me, see what else she has to teach me.

There is no lesson to any of this; not one you don’t already know the truth of, at least. There’s just love — love so big I don’t know what to do with it all. This post is simply a hand on your hand — a touch — whatever your precious body is like on this bright, June morning.

Can you feel it?

Can you feel how not alone you are?

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1. My tiny doll was made to a gorgeous pattern designed by Ann Wood. You can find her beautiful shop here.