Not Quite

Joan called yesterday, She recently relocated to a similar residence in Vt and like most of my friends inquired about my apartment size.

Laughing I said, “It’s an absolutely lovely dollhouse.”

And then I remembered how WWII changed everything even in Hells Kitchen far from the battlefield.

Dad had taken a job across the Hudson in a munitions factory and worked midnight to 8. I seldom saw him except on Sunday when Mom was bathing his injured hands. They had become crippled from his new responsibilities making ammunition.

The cousins no longer visited. Lou and Billy were both in uniform. Mary moved in with us and shared the bed with Ellen and I. Mickey had failed his physical and moved to Brooklyn seeking wartime employment,

And one Monday morning, Mom and Emily Garret, Joan’s Mom, went down 58th street together crossing Tenth Avenue and began work in the famed FAO Schwartz warehouse.

That was the year Ellen got the dollhouse, and the only time I can ever remember being envious. The new emotion was painful and overwhelming. I still recall the anguish I felt knowing I could never own the wooden dollhouse that resembled Tara.

The reason was obvious. I was now 13 and too old to have a dollhouse. Soon I would graduate from St. Paul's. Next year I would get a social security card and a summer job. My Mother and my Grandfather, her realistic Father, were both aware my reluctance to leave childhood was unhealthy, and had already explained that to me.

FAO had a company policy that allowed all returned items, scratched or broken, to be available for employees at a minimal cost.

It was one of the few perks Emily and Mom earned from their new jobs filling orders from the dingy warehouse of the well known toy shop then located on 58th Street and Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

I only knew I desperately wanted a two story wooden dollhouse exactly like the one my younger sister found under the Christmas tree.

It didn’t matter that I had received other lovely gifts including a green leather manicure set also from the famed FAO store.

And now when I step back in time on the escalator of memories, I realize how wise both Mom and my grandfather were. It was time to move on as I have.

Yet sometimes I am permitted a second small step back in time and laugh when I describe my new abode as a dollhouse. Even though it is not quite like Tara.