ABSTRACT
A ge two and my mother’s battle with the world continues. It is nearly Christmas, the most difficult season for the vigilant culture warrior. This year she finds herself pitted against Mona, the babysitter’s three-year-old and my best friend. Mona is the olive-skinned beauty in a large family who, despite this largeness and perhaps because of this beauty, will spend her adolescence running away, and after a promising career as a restaurateur (according to her) end up in the Montana woods raising (according to her tightlipped parents) a pack of near-feral foster kids, perhaps and perhaps not aided by an ex-con boyfriend. But for now, it is December 1965 and we want baby dolls.
