This toy belonged to my cousin and was nothing short of a marvel to my sister and me when we were kids back in 90s. At a time when fancy toys were a rare luxury, we admired it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for sacred relics. My sister, ever the forward-thinker, had her eyes set on it as a future “hand-me-down.” She would regularly pester our cousin with the same hopeful question: “Can I have it when I grow up?”
Well, time did its thing and she grew up. Three decades later, she finally became the proud owner of that little water carrier doll. The only problem? By then, we had lost our cousin… not to tragedy, but to migration. Turns out, the toy stayed, but the owner packed up and left!
The Toy Water Carrier Doll
He fetched two pails of water
Many years ago,
From the river of time,
Where peaceful waters flow.
He carried them along the way
Through countless days and nights,
Under pelting rain,
And brilliant azure skies.
He lost his way in drifting sands,
Buried deep in time,
And spent his days in solitude,
In no man’s land, confined.
Then;
I met him on a random day,
Still clutching the time-worn pails,
Never letting go,
Never letting us fail.
He watched in his dreamy silence
As I laughed in joy.
I peered into his buckets
Now empty, dry, and void.
But heavier than the water,
They brimmed and overflowed,
With echoes of my childhood
And in my eyes, the memories glowed.