The God of old dolls

On the wake of Christmas, in the magenta french car that belonged to  my father, off went the Ponti family to San Giuliano, where my mother's mother, my nonna, had a pink house lost in the shapeless, ironed, grey countryside of Friuli,. Ours was a long, everlasting drive that started in fresh morning, with the dogs barking hello, and ended when the night had spread its black mantle on the blue sky in front of the green gate that led to what appeared to me as a dreamland: the "casale" of San Giuliano. It was, as I said, a pink beauty, with porches in the front that looked  like bridges of eternity, and  a lovely solar clock painted ib tio of the front door, a clock that, believe me, was  as useless as it was lovely.... My grandmother, nonna Stella, wore sugar candy hair the colour of lilac and she fussed around our arrival, all dressed in pure black and grey, as we took out our bags and luggage. The garden, that was silver and silent when we arrived, seemed to wake up in the flurry of our voices and shouts. We, the five Ponti children, flew here and there and everywhere. Each one of us seeking our personal magic things and places. I, for one, run for my doll, my celluloyd doll, old and battered, dressed in a shattered pinnkish frock, with hair that looked like the tail of a mouse. She clicked her weary eyes in the delight of seeing me... One sad evening, on arriving to San Giuliano, I found my doll missing. I run to my granmother, in dismay. A new doll, a Furga doll, in her brand new striped dress looked at me with her stupid, twinkling smile. And I... I started to cry. "God would loose his patience with you, Ester!", my mother snapped.