I miss Ophelia, and the others, but lately I have been thinking specially of Ophelia. She has possibly the strongest personality of my dolls. She is what I make her in a sense, tragic and death-like, but what makes her so real is her tolerance to the persona I give her, and her additional true personality, which is considerably more free-spirited, even wild. Really an opposite to the other. It comes out in the photographs I take of her, which never have turned out perfectly. The last set particularly exemplified this. She was far easier swinging on the barbed wire fence than wilting tragically against the post.
Reading this Women of Influence book is causing me to remember another of my great childhood loves -- "The Miracle Worker," the story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. It was Anne Sullivan I really loved, and still love -- it always made me heartsick to think of her sacrifice, devoting every waking minute to another human being, with almost no life left to herself, until she died in old age, and Helen Keller required another translator. But God -- she must have known it -- that's the best way to live -- it is to have every moment of your life swallowed in supreme goodness and satisfaction. No wonder I loved her, and no longer do I feel sorry for her -- I envy her. I thought of her today perhaps because when I was around eight or nine I grew aware that she and I shared the same initials "AS." Today is the first day that I am Amanda Monteleone at work, and I have written my initials "AM" dozens of times already. It's strange, but the satisfaction of...