When I see a pretty, young (about 23) blonde girl with beautiful legs, at my advanced age of 83, there is no lust in my heart. I see her as I first saw Rosemary in December of 1967. I smile but think of my loss and that the moment will never return. Rosemary is gone.

In the last few days I have been reflecting on the idea that we all go through cycles not quite coinciding with that of our friends and family. A young man with a baby in device hanging in front of him reminds me that I did that but in the 70s our daughters where in pack on our backs.

In what may have been my first awareness of death, it happened when I was five, and taking a tub bath in Buenos Aires around 1948. I was playing with a little toy and when my mother drained the tub I forgot about the toy and saw it (too late to retrieve it) go down the drain. I cried and my mother told me she would get another one. I shouted back, “I want that one!”

Returning from my daily (weather permitting) bike ride when I was almost home I spotted these three dolls which had a sign that said “free”. I immediately thought of my daughters (now 55 and 58) as little girls and what may have happened to the toy dolls we bought for them. Would they remember what they were like?

I was saddened by this cycle and wondered almost as if the dolls were people, if they know not what their fate might be. If someone takes them home will the little girl, or girls who get them, think of where they may have come from?

I was raised as a little boy in Buenos Aires, very much a macho culture, so I was given toy soldiers and cap pistols to play with. It was when our granddaughters Rebecca and Lauren were born that I first had the chance to be a man and yet play with toy dolls. I bought them many of them. Finding little dresses for Rebecca and Lauren to wear was much like dressing up dolls.

It is amazing how those three dolls – free - brought me this shower of autobiographical memories. Sad but happy, too.