Dreams and Dollhouses

Grandparents.com

My husband bought me the dollhouse when I was eight months pregnant with my youngest child. That was 33 short years ago.

It was January, and between snowstorms, when he packed our two kids in the station wagon and said, "I'll see you tonight." He then drove I don’t know how many miles north of Portland, Maine, to pick up a dollhouse I’d been dazzled by at a craft show a few months before.

It was a frivolous item we could hardly afford. But I loved it and he loved me, so he dubbed it my belated Christmas present and spent an entire Sunday driving over hill and dale and more than a few rutted country roads to find what I wanted and bring it home.

The dollhouse was a thing of beauty when it was new. It smelled like fresh wood shavings and it looked like the farmhouse on The Waltons, which was my favorite show at the time. It had a big farmer's porch and glass windows that opened and closed and doors with tiny hinges and dark wood shingles and a stone foundation and two floors of living area plus an attic.

I cherished that dollhouse for a long, long time.

When my children were small, I always told them to "be careful" whenever they played with it. And they were. But in time, the back door fell off its hinges and the front door followed, and someone broke a few railings on the stairs and some shingles got cracked. In time, the house looked, well, lived in.

I always told myself that someday I would take a course and learn how to fix what was broken, then wire it for small electric lights. A friend did this with her own dollhouse. She made little curtains, too, and embroidered doilies and rugs. I would, too, someday, I said.

When my youngest grew up and left for college, I thought, now is the time to work on the dollhouse. So I wallpapered its living room using some wrapping paper and Elmer's Glue. The Elmer's Glue was a big mistake.

A cousin came to stay one summer. "Let's renovate the dollhouse," I said. She was 11, the perfect age for a project like this. We bought an Exacto knife and tried to remove the glued-on wallpaper, but gave up and painted a few walls instead.

In September, she went home and she grew up, too, and the dollhouse got moved from the living room, where it had always lived, to a spare bedroom upstairs, and eventually to the cellar.

And then seven years ago, Lucy, my first grandchild was born. 

"I'll fix the dollhouse for you," my father said, appearing at my door one day, eager for the task. He took it away and bought new shingles and clapboard and replaced the broken railing. And he was going to hang the old doors and tackle the glued-on wallpaper. But he got sick.

I brought the dollhouse home after he died and returned it to the spare room where it has sat ignored for years.

Until this summer, when Lucy discovered it.

I find Lucy these days upstairs rearranging broken furniture, and playing house with tiny old dolls that have seen better days. Pretending and dreaming as 7-year-olds do. And all summer long, I've thought, I have to repair this stuff. I have to get wood glue and find the Exacto knife.

Last weekend I did something better. I was in Maine, in a wood shop, and though it didn't smell exactly like fresh shavings (there was a lot of varnish mixed in), it brought me right back to how I felt when the dollhouse was new and filled with possibility. And so I bought — instead of fancy, delicate wood furniture with tiny knobs and latches and cabinets that open and close and break — a sturdy wood kitchen set and a sturdy couch and bed and bureau and four new poseable wooden dolls.

I haven't given them to Lucy yet. Her cousins are visiting from New York. But next week, when they leave?

We'll both be upstairs playing house, pretending and dreaming.