Christmas I remember best: 'Frankenstein' doll a treasure

I grew up in Costa Rica with five brothers and two sisters. We were very poor. My father was a hard worker and worked two jobs to feed us, but it was not enough. I was always hungry. My mother could put only one scoop of food on our plates each night, and it was never enough for me.

My happiest Christmas in Costa Rica was when I was about 7 years old. My father gathered us together and said, "Well children, this Christmas will be a poor one. We are not going to have presents." We all felt so sad. But my oldest brother, Jorge, tried to comfort Papa by telling him that it was OK and that we didn't need presents.

My father said, "We will still go to the forest and cut our cypress Christmas tree and we will decorate it and it will smell so good in our house. And on Christmas Eve we will make wonderful tamales and everything will be just fine."

You have to know that in Costa Rica it is tradition to make delicious tamales to eat on Christmas Eve. It is also tradition to wake up at midnight and eat tamales and open your Christmas presents. But this year there would be no presents. I was very sad, and I said to my mother and my father that I'd like to have a very expensive doll that I saw in the store window. I said to my father, "Poppy, can't I have a doll for Christmas? I want a doll very bad." I think my father had a knot in his heart when he just looked at me and patted my head.

That year on Christmas Eve our father woke us up as usual at midnight to eat our tamales. And we were surprised that he had presents for all of us. He had taken some wood and made guns for my brothers. For my sister he made a small play stove out of a piece of tin. My sister enjoyed the stove, but she had to be careful because the edges were so sharp that it was dangerous. My sister said that even though our father was a good worker, he was not a good craftsman.

I was so excited that the big box under the tree was for me. When I picked it up it was so heavy. And when I opened it, what a surprise! My father had made a doll for me.

It was not a regular or a normal doll. It was a wooden doll that Father had cut out of a large piece of wood. It was all one piece, and he had made a simple cut to show the form of the arms and legs. The doll had kind of a square head, slightly rounded at the top. Papa had tried to paint a face on the doll. But he was not an artist, and the doll had a man's face with big bushy eyebrows sticking to the nose.