The Special House

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Did you have a doll house? (Ah, I have to say I never quite understood dolls, but not the point, and for another day.) But you know? We have been here at Jungle Red for ten years, right? Or more? 

And this is the sweetest blog ever.

Our dear FOTR, Triss Stein, is a wonderfully talented and gifted author and an all around fabulous person--and whoa, you all. This is the best story yet.

What I Did in the Pandemic

   by Triss Stein

It lives on the third floor of my house, in what is now our guest room. The glue that held it together is dried out, one of the wheels on the platform is long gone, and we are afraid moving it will be a disaster. It is big and narrow, 3 ½ ft.long x 15 “ wide and almost 3’ tall. More than four decades ago, my father built it for my young daughters.  

It is a doll house, a copy of our own Brooklyn rowhouse. It came with real leftover linoleum on the bathroom floors and real carpet remnants in some bedrooms.    

Typical of my dad, who loved to build things but could be a little careless on the details, it is gray where our “brownstone” house is actually cream colored. It has an elegant 3-sided bay window, where ours has only two sides. He left out the deck in the back and the elegant stone staircase to the raised front door.

We loved it then; we love it now.  When it came, we papered and carpeted and furnished the rooms. Our older daughter, who liked crafts, hand-made some accessories, including a crayoned computer, complete with drives and cables, that is still in the dollhouse office. Our younger daughter, later, created a busy family life for the resident dolls and put street numbers on the front door and a lock on the back. 

Time passed.  They outgrew it. I didn’t. I added holiday decorations, skis and scuba gear, a stand mixer in the kitchen. 

After old friends visited with two tween-age boys I found a house of horrors: a beheaded doll at the bottom of the staircase and another in the living room, stabbed with the tiny fireplace poker. It was hilarious and no, the boys did not grow up to be psychopaths.

Time passed. Dust accumulated and many objects were broken or disappeared.

Then new tenants moved into our real garden floor apartment; our daughter, her husband and daughters returned to the old neighborhood. The little girls call “Hello?” from the inside stairs and trot up to wheedle pretzels, use our computers and play with the dollhouse.

By February, 2020, Grandma -that would me - saw it was time for her once-a-decade renovation. That’s how it became one of the few coronavirus projects I actually carried out. I wiped down floors and walls. Fixed what could be fixed and discarded what couldn’t. Washed the textiles, discarded some and ironed others, and ordered new curtain rods, a proper desk chair, and miniscule toothbrushes.

My grandgirls, 6 1/2 and 4, now play incomprehensible games that result in furniture piled on top of the flat roof, or scattered “outside” on the supporting platform. I do know the ironing board became a slide.  The little one explained it all to me.     

These days, the dollhouse is no longer adorable and precisely perfect, as it was when I was in charge. It is loved, just as it is supposed to be. Working on it in a confusing and surreal time, I accomplished something tangible and used my hands to make something better. I made a bond with the next generation but also reached back to the last one. My father did not live to see these girls but his spirit is right there when they play with what he made. He is still creating joy and fun. He always did.

What project gave you joy in the last months?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: That is adorably touchingly wonderful. Oh, my gosh. Thank you, dear Triss. (And they probably have no idea what an ironing board even is? Maybe?) But we have a tiny tiny garden. With tomatoes. We have a true, honest,  big  growing cucumber! I am enchanted. I love our little garden. It's the first thing we look at every day. How about you, Reds and readers? Yes, what project? And did you have a dollhouse?

Triss Stein is a small–town girl from New York farm country who has spent most of her adult life in Brooklyn. She writes mysteries about different Brooklyn neighborhoods, their unique histories, and unique modern issues, in her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home.

In her new  book, Brooklyn Legacies, murder gets in the way of historian heroine Erica Donato’s efforts to understand historic Brooklyn Heights’ clashing cultures and seismic current changes. How do historical preservationists, large real estate developers, a powerful religious organization, old Brooklyn society and aging hippies , live side by side? The answer is, with great difficulty.  And It all begins with a classic McGuffin, a lost portrait of Brooklyn’s own genius, Walt Whitman.