At a shoot today, I spied an enormous old dollhouse an antiques dealer had propped in his window as a way to display his smaller wares. With items like wooden hands, vases and even a wooden decoy duck decorating its peeled and neglected rooms, the once grand house now resembled something Tim Burton would play with, more than Nancy Allen, the previous owner who had jubilantly scrawled her name across the house’s backside however many years ago. I wonder if Nancy is still alive and if she remembers her playhouse’s former incarnation with the same vivid detail I can recall of my own doll house. Mine wasn’t half as large and grand (metal, with painted rooms that pre-dictated the furnishings that belonged there) but I do remember one day, after a particularily busy “housekeeping” session with my dolls and meager furnishings, proudly etching my name on the floor of the kitchen in marker.
I don’t remember my dollhouse causing me to dream to be an ideal “homemaker,” (I wanted actually to be a top advertising executive with a house in the South of France) which I’m sure was the intention of many a toy manufactuer back then. (Why didn’t they think to make hospitals or office buildings where we girls could play doctor, vet or CEO?) My best friend Holly’s fancier wood doll house spurred some envy but at the end of the day, I was happy shuttling my little family from one predictable room to the next.
Today, looking into Nancy’s barren rooms, where cobwebs now shared space with strange collectibles, I felt a pang of nostalgia, not just for wearing pig tails but for how easy it was to think that’s all life was. You got a house, you filled it with a husband, two children and some furniture.
I look around my real home and family now with much love and appreciation and hope Nancy can say the same for the way her life turned out. For some reason when I close my eyes tonight I feel like I will envision her house. Not as it is. But as it was. Scrubbed and ready for imaginary visitors. Little fingers making sure everything is perfect. And a signature, declaring it was.