Love Is Magic

"My Magic Nursery Baby is the most beautiful baby I've ever seen."

I only had three significant baby dolls growing up. Which was a perfectly manageable number for a very organized fake mother such as myself. I wrote lists upon lists of detailed stats about my dolls, I created daily schedules, I designed report cards for them. In fact, I wrote test questions for them, I took the tests on their behalf, and then I scrawled big red X's where I intentionally got questions wrong. It wouldn't be right to expect my children to be perfect.

I knew what each wanted for lunch. How long an appropriate nap should be. I buckled them into the stroller and took them to the park, hoping people would mistake my fictional family for a real one.

I remember desperately wanting a Magic Nursery Baby. It was a planned non-pregnancy, if you will. I didn't want just any doll. I wanted that one. So my parents, being the psychics that they are, put her under the Christmas tree. And made their little girl an extremely happy one.

I knew she was a girl from the very beginning. Because even though the "love is magic" trick is supposed to reveal the sex, the super-smart kids knew that if there was a tuft of hair sticking out from the gender-neutral bonnet, the doll was female. All boys are bald. It's common knowledge.

I named her Julia. She was quite good at math.