The Cradle Board

Sarah and Chris with their new cradleboard and baby doll, Isabel.

September 10, 2018

Over the years, Mark's grandmother, Helen, was very clear about which personal possessions she wanted to be passed down to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren upon her passing. She had two specific items that she told us many, many times were to be handed on to her very first great-grandchild, Sarah.

First was the organ, where Helen and Sarah so often sat together when Sarah was a toddler, "playing" (pounding random keys) and "singing" along (usually more like howling). Sadly, that organ--which I did see in the garage when I first walked through the Mesa house in April, after inheriting the house in March--had disappeared by the time we'd evicted the former residents and moved Jacob in on May 31st. Supposedly, the woman who'd been "squatting" in the house for nearly six years, Renee, had told Mark's Aunt Wilma that she was moving the  organ to storage for "safekeeping." Removing something from the house, which she knew didn't belong to her, was a clear act of criminal theft. By July, a notice had arrived at the house, stating that Renee's storage unit was going to be auctioned off due to nonpayment. I'm sure the organ has been either trashed or sold to a total stranger by now.

Second, Helen had a huge collection of original Cabbage Patch dolls. Literally, dozens of dolls signed on their cushy butts by Javier Roberts, with their tiny little "birth certificates." Most of them were to go to Mark's cousin, Maryhelen, but Helen had selected one special doll that she made sure we all knew was to become Sarah's someday.

I can't say for certain where all those dolls went, but neither Maryhelen nor Sarah ever took possession of a single one. The prevailing opinion is that Mark's former girlfriend, Diane, sold them off to support her prescription-drug addiction after Mark went to prison in Sept 2011, five months after Helen's death (for a burglary Diane admitted to me that Mark did not commit, but had confessed to doing in order to protect her). While he was locked up, Diane also sold everything Mark owned, including his truck, as well as trying to get Helen's house put in her name. Thankfully, Mark was wise enough to refuse her request that he give her power of attorney. Diane was so angry that she refused to communicate with Mark for the three and a half years he served for her crime. Yet, as soon as he was released and moved here to be near his children, she tracked him down and demanded that he get her moved back into Helen's house. (By this time, I'd begun working with the family lawyer to sort it all out.) Mark stood strong against her demands, and Diane finally went away.

We figured that all Sarah would ever receive from Helen's estate were the thousands of happy memories they'd made together and their mutual love of violin (Helen bought the $1,500 violin that Sarah uses in performances to this day). Then, about six weeks ago, one of Jacob's new Mesa neighbors saw him in his front yard as she was driving past, and she pulled over to talk to him. She told him that, a few years before Helen's death, Helen had given her a Kachina doll for safekeeping, which she'd wanted to be passed on to Sarah one day. This neighbor went on to tell Jacob how happy she was to see Jacob was taking care of Helen's home, restoring it to the nice place it always had been during Helen's lifetime. She felt that now was the right time to hand the doll on to Jacob's sister. She invited Jacob to stop by her house some evening for a visit and to pick up the doll.

This is my newest Kachina, a Navajo "Sun Dancer."

I was mystified. I have three Kachinas of my own (Buffalo Dancer, Eagle Dancer, and Sun Dancer), so I'm very familiar with these traditional Hopi/Navajo dolls. However, I couldn't recall Helen ever owning a Kachina. True, I rarely entered Helen's home during the last four years of her life, due to Mark and me being divorced in 2006, but the neighbor had described this Kachina as being on the wall in the corner of Helen's living room for "many, many years." I told Jacob to send me a photo of the doll as soon as he picked it up.

This photo by Jacob revealed that the doll wasn't a Kachina at all.

No, it wasn't a Kachina, but as soon as I received the photo, I remembered the cradleboard. Not so much the doll, but I was with Helen when she purchased the authentic Apache cradleboard from a local antique dealer, way back in the 1990s. 

When my family moved to Arizona in 1980, it took me a while to appreciate the stark, unique beauty of the Southwest, especially the desert. Eventually, though, I decided that I would someday decorate my own home with Southwestern decor. Anything from cowboy art to Native American artifacts. After we moved here to the White Mountains, I purchased my first Kachina and started looking for a cradleboard to display. I mentioned this to Helen during one of her visits to our family. She was so taken with the idea that she led us from one shop to another on a cradleboard search. Finally, she found and purchased the Apache cradleboard above, the same one she'd left with her neighbor for safekeeping more than a decade later. 

My own search took years longer, but I finally found the one that now hangs in my bedroom, as seen in the picture below.

My swaddled doll is in a cradleboard minus the board.

While I wouldn't have recognized Helen's Native doll without the cradleboard, I do recall that Helen searched for and found a baby-doll to put in the Apache infant carrier, one that looked like it could be a Native American child. Seeing it now, I wonder if it's another Cabbage Patch baby. I guess we need to check its butt for a signature... However, this wasn't one of the dolls Sarah played with as a child. For that, Helen had given her a pair of "twin" baby dolls, one white and one black. The black baby was hands-down Sarah's favorite, as evidenced by home videos. She was always carrying and cuddling that little baby-doll.

During Jacob's most recent visit, he brought the cradleboard to Sarah. The carrier and the doll were both a little grimy and a lot dusty, so we cleaned them off (accidentally removing the doll's eyelashes in the process). Then I found a thick, soft, neutral-colored baby blanket to swaddle the doll in before lacing her into the board as best I could. There's an art to tying a baby securely into a cradleboard, which art I do not possess. I also left one of the doll's hands free, something no self-respecting Native woman would ever allow, but I thought it was cute like that.

Great-grandma's wish has been fulfilled, at last!

While I occasionally still see an Apache infant swaddled into a cradleboard by a Native mother or grandmother in our community, it's increasingly rare. Most young moms of all cultures now opt to protect their babies with modern infant carriers and car seats. Nonetheless, I think that cradleboards represent the universal desire of mothers everywhere to protect our beloved children. It's a beautiful piece of history.

And I'm so happy that Sarah is able to reconnect, finally, with a piece of family history that she shared with her great-grandma, Helen. I don't doubt that Helen, waiting in the next life to embrace her grandchildren again one day, is glad her little cradleboard baby has found her way home to Sarah at last.