Origins: San Francisco Arrival

It’s me in San Francisco just days after we left London. I had just discovered Coco Puffs, peanut butter, and technicolor. I still remember the flavor of that first taste of Skippy. A week earlier, I was in distress. I didn’t want to leave England where my father still lived. My mother took me to a doll shop. I’d had a tiny, shiny. hard plastic doll, maybe a couple of inches long, that I absolutely loved until I lost it. Now my mother said I could have any doll I wanted. I had never been to such a classic high-class doll shop before. I felt as though I had stepped into a storybook. I spotted an extra soft baby doll inside a glass cabinet. There was nothing plastic about her. I held her tight, her softness against my cheeks, as we shuffled onto the plane. It was a bumpy flight. A long one too. I threw up. I clung to that baby doll as we disembarked the plane and stepped Into a new world.