Five

My daughter first started building dollhouses when she was about five years old. I first started writing stories when I was about the same age. It’s the same thing. For her, dollhouses are stories. She builds them for younger girls in the neighbourhood too. She turned it into a business when she was about ten. She’s a teenager now, and has sold many. Girls love her dollhouses. They’re each unique.

My daughter’s own dollhouse is enormous. It takes up a huge space in her bedroom. She just keeps adding on to it. Room after room after room. It’s practically a castle.

“I want to break the entire thing in half,” she said, “and build a gorgeous atrium in the middle.”

My mistake was purchasing architecture books for her. I was quite worried about her breaking her entire dollhouse in halves. But I knew she could do it and it would be beautiful. She envisions things.

“What do you want from me?”

“Just support.”

“You have mine.”

She has several large boxes full of supplies for building dollhouses. But it always pains me to see when she destroys something she has made. But I do it too. I destroy things I’ve made. It’s an artist-thing. Destruction is a form of creation. 

Her dollhouse is about the same height as she is, and it has countless rooms. It’s her mirror. Each room is like a memory-box of her life. A 3-D model of her life. A photo album of her memories told in tiny rooms. She has said she’s too old to play with dolls but not too old to make dollhouses. She’s like me: a storyteller. And we can’t stop no matter what happens. We must keep on. And we keep remembering.

“Why an atrium?” I asked.

“It’s not just an atrium. It represents a growing pain. It’s what I’m going through right now. And the plants inside represent my new life, or what’s next for me.”

“What is next?”

“Just something new. I think I have to keep adapting. That’s what plants do. They grow according to their environment. So am I. I think I am something new. My generation is something new. We have to live in a new world. You wouldn’t understand.”

I set up the hot-glue gun. And I set up her paints in a neat row, with brushes cleaned and tidy. I watched her disassemble the middle of her dollhouse room-by-room. She was meticulous. If she has anything at all, it’s an eye for detail. She sees things I could never see.

Then it was separated. It felt weird to see. I think she felt it too. Actually, I think I felt her feelings, as emotions are usually contagious. She stared helplessly at two sides of herself. The young and the now. And she wanted to bridge them. She sat on the floor and began working on the pieces for the atrium. She slowly built it, as if in no hurry. It was like puberty and would take years. But she kept building. Piece after piece, year after year. 

“How many windows are you planning for it?” I asked.

“As many as I can see through. It’s hard to see through even one right now.”

“But you have hope?”

“Yes. It’s all I have. Because I never wanted this. I wanted a different world. But we get what we get, right?”