Equality

Now I don't know if I threw a hissy-fit or if my mother was the enlightened person who would not let her daughters have new dolls without letting her only ( at that point ) son have one too.
Whatever the reason, when my sisters were proudly presenting their new dolls, I too had one;
a boy doll named Jens Peter Ole, who had a sweater and shorts and a woolly cap.
This was a few, scant years after the long occupation of Denmark by the Nazis, so things were hard to come by and I am sure that the clothes the dolls wore were recycled from old knit-wear, painstakingly unraveled and washed and re-knitted again.
But there we were, sun in our eyes and brand, spanking new dolls.
I asked my oldest sister a few weeks before she so suddenly died, if she remembered the name of her doll in that picture
Bodil, she said without hesitation.
That was her name. Bodil.
I wonder if my other sister remembers the name of her doll too.
They were so important to us and so fragile, being made from left-overs and poor quality materials and surely did not survive a long time;
but their memories and names did.