My mother and Muriel Henwood had been best friends since their early school days. Their friendship continued throughout the war years, and even after they were both married.
Muriel’s husband, Henry Brine, was a miner who worked underground in the Springhill coal mines. During the summer months, Muriel and Henry often visited us on the farm. They didn’t have any children, but when they drove into our yard, I was always delighted to see them, especially Henry. He would take my brother and me for walks across the field, picking bouquets of flowers. Daisy’s, buttercups, pink clovers, and a white flower that I have no idea of what it was called, while my brother just trudged along chattering with Henry. I would bring home a handful for Mother, and Henry would have a little bouquet for Muriel. We didn’t know it at the time, but Henry always cleared it with Mother beforehand.
Once we arrived back home, we’d take a rest from the walk, sitting on the bench on the veranda, brother on one side of Henry and me on the other, and he’d always have a chocolate bar in each pocket for us.
When Dad got home from work, we’d tell him about our outing with Henry and about the chocolate bars. Henry and Dad were good friends too, and countless times I recall them sitting under the shade of the tree or on the bench on the veranda chatting, as we played on the lawn. Sometimes we would go to Springhill and visit with them too, and a chocolate bar always seemed to find its way into our little hands. To us four-year-olds it was a special treat, as chocolate bars were not on the list of treats issued out by Mother or Dad. Maybe they chose not to give us chocolate bars so Henry’s treat would be something special for us. I honestly don’t know. While in Springhill we would also stop in to see Muriel’s mother, whom our mother thought a lot of.
To me Muriel’s mother looked ancient, maybe in her 90s, but perhaps she was only in her 70s at the time. Mrs. Henwood’s face had many wrinkles, and her hands were very pale, which made the blue veins stand out. She had snowy white hair, always done up in a bun. She used a cane to get around and walked much slower than Mother. She wore long dresses, and every time we visited her, it seemed she had on the same old knitted sweater. She was a dear, sweet old lady, but there was something unique about her, which caused me not to like her right from the very first time we went to her house. When we would visit Mom and Dad’s friends, or even family members, I always took my favourite doll with me, but when we visited this old lady, I had to leave my doll in the car. I was not allowed to take her with me into Mrs. Henwood’s house. “But Mom, why can’t I take my dolly?” Mother never told me the real reason until many years later, just passed it off, saying, “Dolls make Mrs. Henwood very sad, and we don’t want her feeling sad now, do we?”
I would reply, “No,” and sadly I’d leave dolly in the car. The real reason was that Mrs. Henwood had a fear of dolls, called pediophobia, which is a fear of human-like figures (dolls, mannequins, dummies) that triggers intense anxiety, often caused by childhood trauma. When she was just a little girl, playing in the bedroom at a friend’s house, she opened a closet door, and a huge pile of dolls came tumbling down on top of her.
From that day onward, every time she saw a doll, she faced symptoms that included rapid heart rate, sweating, shaking, and panic. She would automatically start screaming and scramble to get away from the doll. All her life, Mrs. Henwood refused to visit friends and family where a doll might be present, and she organized her entire living space to ensure no dolls or similar figures were present.
When I was finally told about her fear of dolls, I found it hard to understand how Muriel and her sisters Olly and Christina went through those early years of childhood without a favourite doll to play with. Maybe the old proverb, “Out of sight, out of mind,” best describes their early childhood years. Since dolls were not visible in their home, perhaps dolls were more easily forgotten about or ignored.
A few years later Mrs. Henwood passed away, and my only regret is that I wish I had been old enough back then to understand about her fear of dolls so that I could have enjoyed the visits in her home.