Crying over you

I was alright for awhile

I could smile for awhile

But I saw you last night

You held my hand so tight

As you stopped to say hello

Oh, you wished me well

You, you couldn't tell

That I'd been crying over you

Crying over you

When you said, "So long"

Left me standing all alone

Alone and crying, crying

Crying, crying

~ Roy Orbison, “Crying” (1961)

I love the music from the late fifties and the whole decade of the sixties. Most of the songs they sing nowadays don’t say a thing to me; I feel nothing when I hear them. Must be there’s something about the natural sound and lack of flashy clothing, the way music functions in society nowadays. If you’re watching the performer, it’s nearly impossible to hear the song unless you close your eyes.

Yesterday I was listening to the radio and it was an oldies program. Roy Orbison, bodiless on the radio, almost sightless in real life, was playing. Actually, there was a series of his greatest hits and I was thrilled. His voice was incredible, and as I was listening, “Crying” came on. I was driving, but at that moment pulled into my driveway and just shut my eyes, thinking how both Roy and I share the trait of poor vision. 

It would be hard to list all the songs that refer to crying or tears, and all the cases of unrequited love. If we’ve been through that trance, we understand on a shared level. If we haven’t, we can listen to the pain described in the lyrics and experience a catharsis or maybe just relief. Yesterday, listening to Roy singing about crying in a way that cannot fail to touch anyone with a heart, I remembered a part of my life that had long been forgotten. I remembered a doll.

I wish I hadn’t. The doll was better off buried in my past, because I couldn’t retrieve her from that time of my life, which was somewhere between five and 9 years old. I truly can’t be any more precise than that, which is kind of sad. Actually, five or six might be closer, because this doll was the first I remember, even though I’m certain I had a doll from the day I was born. I had a walking doll that was as big as I was and whom I named Katrina for some reason. But the first doll I remember holding and rocking was Tiny Tears. 

Tiny Tears never had a name, but she was perfect for me to hold, meaning she wasn’t really tiny. The problem I have now as I look back is that she had no name. Tiny isn’t a real name. I was more preoccupied with tending to her needs and making her cry by feeding her a baby bottle with water in it. She was very interactive and the tears were an excuse to dry them and cuddle her. Maybe I was never sad when she ‘cried’ because I knew her tears were only the water I’d fed her, but pretending was fun. I pretended a lot. About everything.

So Roy’s tear-jerker song (it always made me cry because yes, I had experienced a broken heart as a teen-ager) reminded me of my Tiny Tears who did not make me cry because I knew she would be all right again once her well ran dry, so to speak. However, the happiness I felt as a little girl was absent as I once again remembered her. She is gone, like the girl in Orbison’s song. And now I need her again, want her back. It will not be an easy task.

No, it is going to take an enormous effort on my part. I have every reason to believe she is seven hundred miles away, in another state. She has to be, because that’s where I left her, not because I had grown up and didn’t play with dolls anymore, But because I left all my childhood there in that house. Only the memories could come with me as I left for college. I mean, what student shows up in a dorm with a Tiny Tears in her ams? I always planned to return, but then things went wrong at the house and the new occupant used the state law to bar me from entering. The resident was slick.

All because of yesterday’s song, oh Orbison you provocateur, see what you’ve done? You awakened a need in me to have my weeping doll back, not to play with her, but maybe to channel some of those connected feelings, the sense of being needed, the idea that life was about loving and caring - ignore the sentimentality here, I’m consciously parodying that - and infuse my life now with them. 

What I’m trying to say is that I’m in a very dark space at the moment. The song I heard by chance made things worse, and perhaps I’m only still alive because I remembered little Tiny Tears. I didn’t tell you that at the beginning because I didn’t want to sound like your usual depressed person. What came out of the song is that it has set me on this quest to recover a moment of sheer simplicity and an open heart. I don’t have much time to make this trip, but here I am nearing the house where Tiny waits. I drove without stopping, straight through, and I am ready to walk through the door after many years.

Later…

I couldn’t get in. That didn’t stop me, though. I still know a few people around town. One is in law enforcement, the other is a lawyer. They went together with a warrant to retrieve Tiny. If that sounds weird, it wasn’t. The lawyer and police officer said they were looking for the doll because they had information it contained an illegal substance. (They didn’t need to identify what it actually was, because the Resident was frightened enough to allow them to remove the doll from the premises. Fortunately, Tiny was exactly where she had always been, so locating and boxing her up was simple. The Resident was not that bright, and didn’t think the appearance of two self-identified individuals was anything but the truth. It’s true, why would a lawyer and a police officer go to a house at the same time?

Later…

I’ve eliminated the details of the drive to and from Tiny Tears’ house, which was also my house once, because the miles aren’t interesting, nor is the scenery. It was grueling to drive 1400 miles in a weekend, but now I’m back home. My doll - long lost friend - is not in my arms but on a bookshelf near the television. I plan to wash her clothes by hand, and recall how she only ever had one or two outfits, unlike the capitalist creation Barbie who came soon after. I look at her eyes, which open and close, and think how interactive she seemed back then, how un-electronic. She also was attractive in a plain or even unisex sort of way. 

I’ve forgotten whether Tiny had a crying sound years ago, but she doesn’t have one now. It isn’t essential, anyway. Maybe she had shoes, but I doubt it, so neither of us misses them, I guess. And I just keep admiring her from over here, contemplating her simplicity, understanding and mourning the fact that a doll created in 1950 like she was could no longer be popular today. She’d sit on the shelves of every toy store forever, and then the Tears part of her name might come true.

The trip to rescue Tiny was a journey, not to recover a possession that had long been out of reach, but rather it seems like it was a test. A test to see if I really wanted something badly enough that I’d put off ending my life to get it back. Now that I’m back home, I have a full sense of how vast my doll is, how with her and through her I learned things that will, in fact help me understand.

Help me understand the world that is consuming itself through continuous wars, a world that is sucking me dry with its fakery and fakirs, dry to the point where I no longer knew what or why to be alive. Tiny Tears holds everything I learned when we first lived together. She’s not exactly my Holy Grail, but she’s close. And when I do finally stop living - not by my own hand, I promise you - we’ll be laid to rest together. It’s in my will.

Author’s Note:

The above was written as an assignment for a college English course. I am the professor. Here are my thoughts after reading it. They are meant only for you, my readers. I’ll use a different approach when writing to the student.

 The essay needs some editing and that includes improving the overly personal tone with overused descriptors. I would give it a B- or possibly a B as it stands, but expect considerable improvements in the final version.

For example, I’ll want to see more about the relationship girl - doll, it needs to be brought to life. Also, what can actually happen now the girl and doll are reunited? Have too many years gone by? What will happen if the memories in fact have faded beyond retrieval? If the woman was only deceiving herself in thinking they could save her life? 

There needs to be an explanation of what state law gives the Resident the right to refuse entry to the woman asking for Tiny?

Did Tiny have more features that need to be described to make her come to life? Did she have moveable arms and legs? How much water could she hold? What color were her eyes? How tall was she? 

You need to convince me that you have described a journey as opposed to just driving a lot of hours. Also, is this original work? It sounds a bit like something your mother might write.