Doris

My uncle Ken was an "artist" when he was young. As such my grandmother thought one day, when a department store was closing that he might like to have a severe looking hat mannequin with an absurdly long neck as a stand. He did not have any interest in the object and tried with no success to pawn it off on his friends and he found he and the family was stuck with "Doris" as she came to be known. Later, my father went to the bus stop outside thousand oaks, CA to be shipped off to college at UCLA. He stood outside the drugstore with his belongings neatly packed and piled by the busstop with the rest of the family, there to see him off. He ventured into the drugstore to buy a bus ticket and when he emerged, ticket in hand, he found his family had vanished and next to his things stood Doris. He then proceeded to ride the bus all the way into LA accompanied by an oversized vacant looking hat mannequin. The family later questioned why he hadnt simply abandoned Doris at the busstop. But that is as it were a question for the ages, as Doris became an inevitability.

She ended up in my grandmothers basement years later hidden away with other forgotten or ignored goods. My father was about to be shipped off to the philippines (where I was to be born) and had stored some things to follow him in the very same basement. I do not know what enterprising family member moved Doris from the storage side of the basement to the "ship to Mark in the philippines" side, but good show. He and my mother were very surprised to find her amongst their other belongings. She fared the journey well and later Ken received a package from the philippines, a present, labeled "lamp shade". The lamp shade was joined by its accompanying "lamp shade stand" a few days afterward. This custom continued throughout the years, gifting the ungiftable mutually unwanted inevitable Doris. When I was younger, after we had moved to Maryland Mason and I were playing near the daybed, I unearthed what appeared to me to be one of the heads from the end of Return to OZ. I presented it with confusion and wonder to my mother, to her horror. It became such that when Papa Lee sent a stalk of brusselsprouts to my dad we spent hours debating how to return the Doris sized box to sender.

A few years ago the stand rotted away and was subsequently regifted in the form of christmas ornaments to the entire family. The floating head still makes the rounds but had all but disappeared from family discourse for quite some time until last thursday, Melissas birthday, which fell on the day of our family get-together. She had repeatedly vehemently her desire for presents and a birthday. I dont think this is what she had in mind. The reaction was beautiful, however, when she unwrapped her final present and gave us the full weight of her drama and theater arts degree. Deciding to make the best of things, she and I took Doris down to the local tavern for a beer.



Its probably for the best that Melissa has her now because I cannot imagine what horrors would befall Doris in Cloyne.