The nested dolls

When my oldest daughter was visiting a few months ago, I saw she had taken down the nested dolls from our library shelves. I said nothing. Gave her that moment happily, or rather, left her in peace. There she was in that cave of books, a kind of nourishing egg itself, with the grandmother doll opened and all the others in a row on the table. My daughter perched there utterly self-contained, absorbed. From where I stood briefly, passing through, it was a benign, far look. After all, there was childhood with its smooth, rosy and complete complexion split open before her, beings within beings, she herself growing a human being within herself, her own body a nurturing, soft cave now for the new life. It is a miracle, this opening and opening to the life within. And that's something rather peculiar or specific to my daughter, the act of opening. As a child there wasn't a door, a drawer, a box or container she hadn't explored. You could say she was our little Pandora, lifting lids and covers to peek beneath, curious, irresistibly so. Did she release ills into our world, our small world, to run rampant through the house as if we lived in that Greek story? I'd say not. I'd say there was a simple, matter-of-fact sense at the tips of her fingers. What's inside? I don't recall her hoarding like a magpie, no more than our other children with their secret caches and stashes under the stairs or in the too-small-to-bother-with crawl spaces. What's inside? Oh. That. And move on to the next. Perhaps its that cool, detached curiosity which allows her inside the medical profession where it is very useful to ask questions, take a look, satisfy curiosity, and move on to the next possibility. But I won't deny her a moment with her childhood Babushka, the nested Russian dolls. You can imagine the wood turner handling the light wood like egg shells, pinning, spinning, trimming, hollowing out and measuring within a hair's breadth, till the two halves fit and come apart with a squeak. It's quiet in the library now. She has them all undone, the story lined up, generation after generation. Next, the painter with her fine-tipped brushes, outlining arms and scarves, eyes and a distant look to be varnished, glossed up, durable. How long, how far she traveled with her precious cargo within? Mother. Daughter. Granddaughter. And that place held by the one solid piece of this curious puzzle, the newest story carved neat and never entered by the turner's knife. Still so shiny after all these years is the core of this assembly, this putting together and taking apart, this opening up and closing with a final squeak. This is my daughter's moment.