Amish Children Play with Dolls Without Faces

I spotted it after church services were over. Laura was playing with it. The white miniature-sized, plastic English doll with delicate features looked so pretty. I admired its tiny, beautiful brows with open eyes, its dainty nose and lips, and its cute defined hands and feet, the tiny fingers and curly toes. She was exotic, a non-Amish doll dressed in proportionately scaled-down Amish clothes-the first time I saw an English one in our clothes.

I played with a set of white cloth twin Amish dolls. My mother had crafted them from scratch when I was too young to remember. They were about twelve inches tall and outfitted in a matching set of dark brown clothes: a dress and black Amish cap for the girl, and a shirt and black pants for the boy.

The dolls had no faces. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no fingers, no toes. Featureless shapes denoted the head, hands, and feet.

“Mom, look. I want a doll like that.” I dragged my mother’s attention away from the church women she was visiting with.

My mother pressed her lips together. “No, it’s zu hoch.”

Zu hoch meant “too prideful” or “too arrogant.” Hoch also referred to all non-Amish, non-Anabaptist people: die hoche leht. “The prideful, arrogant people.” Er is hoch gah. “He left the church and joined the English.” It was a sin to…