This is from a post a couple years ago that I think should illustrate why I love dollhouses so much:
I'll spare you the rest of the post, which basically describes how I was SOBBING HYSTERICALLY when I found the remnants of my dollhouse furniture mixed in with the rest of my nieces' and nephews' toys. The post was written right around the time of THIS, so I think it is safe to assume that my emotions were all over the place and I may have been expressing some displaced anguish. But. My dollhouse was a big part of my childhood. In some ways I guess I considered it a physical object that represented my relationship with my grandmother. Dollhouse = LOVE.My grandmother built my dollhouse and I remember it being spectacular. I think I probably remember it as more spectacular than it actually was. But that is because I loved it so much.
It lived at my grandma's house and I played with it pretty much every time I went over there. So, a lot. I would make up stories and scenarios for the dolls. I would arrange them in the various rooms. I would make extra things for the house-- a mailbox made out of a clothespin, a tiny drawing to hang on the wall. I would act out the storybooks my grandma read to me. I would take out all the furniture and things and use my grandma's cleaning products to scrub the carpet and clean the floors and then I would put the furniture back in and arrange everything nicely.
My grandmother died when I was 12 and I was devastated. I miss her more than I can accurately describe. She was really the only person I was completely myself around, when I was younger. I know our relationship would be different if she were alive today. I know that I would never appreciate her more than I did when I was a child.
I was devastated when my grandmother died, devastated again when the dollhouse broke into pieces, and devastated again when I found out that the pieces had been either lost or thrown out over the years. The furniture was all I had left, and so I was happy to see it again, but also disappointed and sad that so much of it had been broken or lost.
In November, my mom and I went to the antiques faire to do some Christmas shopping. We spotted a very sweet dollhouse at one of the stands and went over to admire it.
"It's so cute," my mom said.
"I love it," I said.
We admired it some more and then went about our business. My mom bought a fancy chess set for my dad for Christmas, I bought a couple Breyer horses for my nieces.
"That dollhouse really was cute," my mom said.
"It REALLY was," I said.
"I think maybe you need a new dollhouse."
"I think maybe I do!"
And so, Christmas morning, I came out to the living room and found this by the tree:
Dollhouse = LOVE.
