Squeeze Me I Cry

A couple of weekends ago, Daniel and I drove through a small community at the base of Sequoia National Park. Several homes lined the hilly countryside, most of them had well manicured lawns and expensive decorative yard art.
As we drove on the snaked road, we slowly passed the house in the picture above. Seconds later I told Daniel that there was something about that place back there that stirred something inside of me.
Daniel knows me pretty good. He pulled over to the side of the road, turned the car around and headed back. We stopped in front of the house and I took some pictures.
"What is it about that house?"he asked.
I didn't know at the time.
That was a few weeks ago and I'd overly studied the photographs that were taken that day. The house looked pretty junky with stuff all over the yard and lots of trinkets in the windows. I edited the pictures, zoomed in and out, changed them from color to black and white, increased and decreased the contrast-- searching for whatever it was that spoke to me days before. Nothing! There was nothing I could do to pinpoint the feeling the house had given me that day.
I closed the album up on my desktop for several days and opened it back up this morning. Then---I noticed something strikingly obvious and the feelings of that day vividly returned. In every picture, I had virtually made my focal point centered on the doll perched on the pink flamingo.
In the playground of my mind, the little girl that owns the doll in this picture---is me. She teaches her baby girl that nothing is impossible and shows her baby how to fly and to dream big.
Flooded with tears and memories, I could see the little girl in me, playing with Baby First Step, my favorite doll, the only doll I remember getting for Christmas one year. She was just as real to me as anything else. I would carry her around and at nighttime, rock her to sleep, and sing to her: "Shake me I rattle, squeeze me I cry, please take me home and love me."
After my first daughter was born, and I held her for the first time I thought about that song so long ago. Over the next 12 years, I would have three little girls and that song never wore out.

Click Here for Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROogzTnwGA8