news-record.com

In the fall of 1978, I spotted a group of dollhouses at the toy store inside Carolina Circle Mall.

I spent a lot of time studying these dollhouses and all the accessories inside a glass case.

The dollhouses had electric lights that glowed from within. Rooms could be decorated with wallpaper and tiny artwork. I loved that you could decorate the dollhouses with details down to tiny rolls of toilet paper, if you wanted. Kitchens could be outfitted with minuscule food and plates.

The houses and furnishings were expensive at this store. I was getting past the age of actually playing with a dollhouse and knew these were meant to be collectibles and not actually played with.

Looking through the Sears Wish Book that year, I found dollhouse kits for sale and put one on my Christmas list. I spent many hours poring over the pictures in anticipation of Christmas.

Christmas came, and the dollhouse kit I requested was underneath the tree. It was in a flat cardboard box and needed to be assembled. It was pressed chipboard with small, partially cut-out pieces meant to be sanded and attached one painful step after another.

My daddy opened it, looked at the instructions and closed the box. He promised to make me a dollhouse but said this one was going back to the store.

This was very unusual because my daddy could fix or mend anything.

Broken necklace? Take it to Daddy, and he would fix it before your eyes — somehow. Toy box needed to be put together? No problem for my father.

I recall many nights when my daddy would get off work and immediately go to work repairing the car or the washing machine. He seemed to have a solution for anything that needed to be fixed.

For Daddy to refuse to put this dollhouse together meant it must have been impossible. Likewise, I knew if my daddy said he’d make me another one “sometime,” he would.

One day in March, I came home from school to find my daddy in the backyard building my dollhouse. I had no idea he’d undertake it that day, during his vacation.

I helped some as he put the finishing touches on my dollhouse. He built it from leftover wood a neighbor had given him. The neighbor had helped him cut the door and windows from these scrap pieces of paneling.

The house had a living room, a kitchen, three bedrooms and a bathroom. All the rooms covered two floors and an attic. The dollhouse living room had a big picture window just like the one in our house.

When the house was together, my daddy used some leftover house paint to paint the rooms. It was fun to watch as the living room of my dollhouse become the same green color as our home’s living room.

What would become the boy’s bedroom matched the golden color of my brother’s real-life room, and the pink dollhouse bathroom matched one of our bathrooms.

My daddy even attached a front door to the house with the scrap of wood that was cut earlier to make the opening. Later, pieces of clear, firm plastic was stapled inside the house, becoming the “glass” over the windows.

Never mind that the windows were not cut evenly across the front of the house. It did not matter to me that the rooms from one floor to another were disproportionate. It was OK that it did not have electric lights that glowed from inside.

Most importantly, this dollhouse, built especially for me, was lovingly made by my daddy’s heart and hands.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.