The Tale of 2 Dollhouses

My dad passed away in August of 2023, just 5 days after my run in with a tornado. I started writing this post back in November of 2023, when I felt I was strong enough to push through and tell this important story, but I was wrong. It has remained unfinished since then. Today is 1 year later to the day (August 29, 2023) my dad passed away, and it’s time to finish.

It’s been really, really hard to lose a parent. It is supposed to be hard, and I wouldn’t miss him so much, if I hadn’t loved him so much. Parents should die before their kids, it is the circle of life and I know I will be okay. We continue to grieve and I know we will never stop missing him.

This post is about Dollhouses and my dad.

My dad’s very best gift he ever gave my sister Tammy and me was a handcrafted dollhouse he gave us for Christmas in the early 70’s. It still exists, over the many, many years countless kids have played with it, our kids included. He designed it in the perfect scale for our Dawn Dolls. We played with it for YEARS and it will always hold a special place in my heart and I am sure Tammy’s too.

Sidenote:If you have no idea what a Dawn Doll is I am sad for you, but you can still see what they are by looking here.

So, my dad for many years was crafting dollhouses. He started making these again in the 90’s. Along the way he mastered his craft so much so he made jigs and templates for each individual piece. In fact after he died Tammy and I were looking for “inventions” to include in his gallery at the memorial service and we found pieces of dollhouses. We found organized boxes of stairs, window jambs and ornate front doors, all made with his hands, just waiting for the newest dollhouse to be constructed.

Now, back to why I am writing this post. Back in the mid 90’s when Tammy and I were adults, My dad gave my sister and me each a dollhouse painted to our specifications, meaning colors. They were the design of his choosing and they were mirror images of each other.

These houses were inspired by the painted ladies located in San Francisco. They had gingerbread trim on them and they had the tiniest intricate details crafted by my dad! I actually found the paint chips I sent to my dad, while looking through his papers. I chose blues and Tammy chose greens. These houses were gifted to us in 1995, I got mine in the summer and Tammy got hers around Christmas. They are mirror images of each other.

We both still have them, and they are cherished.

Back in August (2023), just 1 day after my dad died, my sister and my mom were at my house. We were sorting through boxes and bins full of my dad’s papers. Most were discarded because they weren’t necessary and really held no sentimental value. As my sister was sitting at the table with me she received a text from her oldest son Donnie telling her she needed to check her dollhouse. He continued, “when I was 7 I remember papa telling you when he dies there is something special in the top portion of the dollhouse”….

You better believe it, I was a blur when I say I ran upstairs like Florence Griffith Joyner (FLOJO) …………..to the room and the wall that the house hung on to check my dollhouse. Jim came with me, we retrieved that heavy house off the wall and took pieces apart. We checked it thoroughly, I could hear my father’s voice in my head saying “don’t force anything” (he would always tell me this and to this day it stuck) as we checked each section. We found nothing. I felt bad, but I thought perhaps my nephew back in 1995 didn’t remember properly what my father said because he was just a little squirt at the time.

Later that day when Tammy arrived home she texted me exactly what she found and where she found it in her dollhouse. She found a black plastic cylinder with a gray top (the kind that holds film for a camera) in her roof. ‘It came apart easily’ she said, ‘and you could hear it rattling around in there’.

This cylinder held 3 things. A 1963 penny (the year Tammy was born), a 1995 penny (the year her dollhouse was built and gifted to her) and a handwritten note from my dad.

This felt like a message from my dad from his grave. It was special and I wanted that special thing. I wanted it bad.

But my house was as vacant as a Block Buster Video Store and I needed to come to terms with it.

Over the following days I kept questioning myself, did my dad just forget to put a special note to me into a mystery spot in my house? Was it as simple as that? Could it be? OR… did my dad have a beef with me? Did I disappoint him? Was he not proud of me? My answer to that? Yes, an astounding yes. For several years before his death, and before the dimentia started robbing him of his personality and memories we differed on politics.

After my father retired from doing 35 years with Ford Motor Company (and collected his cheap clock as a reward) as an Electrical Engineer, he started concentrating on local and national politics. Actually concentrating is the wrong word. He started obsessing. HE WAS OBSESSED! He had stacks and stacks of letters he would send off to senators, politicians and anyone who he viewed as having power and could help his cause.I believe his cause started with the constitution. That (constitution) I can understand.

He called himself a “CONSTITUTIONALIST” (and as he would say it with such spite and anger, after I called him a Republican, the word constitutionalist would come out of his mouth with spit on each syllable of the very long wet word).

He didn’t want his freedoms taken away, (I can get behind that) I want to be Free, like Freddy Mercury sings in that amazing song. All of this caused the man who wasn’t a gun guy to start buying guns and became an NRA subscriber. YEEEEE Gads. The gun thing, ok… I guess? But it was the fact that it was something he wouldn’t normally do that made me question all the various events that caused our discord.

I blame…

let’s list a few things, shall we?

*Parkinsons/Dementia- I think he was sicker a lot earlier than any of us thought. He admitted to as much before he died during a lucid moment he had with me.

*Fox News, Bill O’Reilly and Other Goons on that Channel. That channel put a divide in our family early on- he believed everything they said on that channel. I once asked him “if Fox News told him it was raining monkeys outside would he need to look out the window to confirm it or would he believe it because it was “reported” on the Fox Channel?” He answered “I would believe what they (Fox) said and I would not need to confirm it.” UGH!

*Lack of Being Observant. I lived in California for most of my married life, so when I would come home his behaviour was puzzling to me. The many stacks of letters, his rants and his disinterest in my 2 sons… his grandsons. I thought it was concerning, but since the rest of the family was mostly on the same page as him it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I wished my mom had discovered all those letters before he passed, while all his ranting was happening. She was shocked by what I already knew - the many stacks of letters ready to be sent.

I could list more things, I won’t. I really don’t want this to get political, so please know that. There was a huge wound between my dad and I that would get continuously reopened. We learned, later to work around it, to keep the peace and continue a relationship, but it wasn’t easy.

So-this was ALL swimming around in my mind: I should have held my tongue here, I should not have responded to that comment there, etc…. My dad disliked me (I thought) - I was the nonconformist to his family, the “Marin Hot Tubber, Tree Hugging, Nuts and Granola Gal from California” that possessed all the progressive attributes my dad grew to hate SO MUCH. I don’t deserve a priceless treasure in my dollhouse. I don’t!

I muddled through putting together what I felt like was a lovely tribute to my dad. Honestly I worked for days on that Canva video. I was really proud at how it came together, and the story it told - the story I heard many times and was able to piece together like a private investigator fitting every prominent photo into its proper place and “solving the case.”

I went through countless photos of my dad in various situations spanning his lifetime. Some included me and held special memories for me with my dad. Others were of him, before children and marriage, that I was seeing for the first time. I pushed through telling myself, he doesn’t deserve my hurt feelings, he forgot about me, I’m going to let those feelings go and “get the project done.” It didn’t matter and it made me feel better because I was angry and I didn’t feel a void from losing him. I’ll just move on. I didn’t hurt as much, and that was because he forgot me and was ashamed of me.

The morning of my dad’s memorial service I was finishing up my tribute video for my dad. It wasn’t quite done, and then magically it was. I remember Jim upstairs yelling for me, he was downstairs for a bit, had coffee and a bite and went back up, I figured he was getting dressed for us to leave… but that wasn’t what he was doing. He was yelling for me ‘TRACEY’ he shouted, me annoyed yelled back angrily “WHAT”?!!! I remember him coming to me, but it’s been nearly a year at this point and the logistics of the whole event have faded somewhat. He appeared in front of me, excited and held out a fist in front of me and opened his hand while flipping it over cupping a small black plastic cylinder with a gray top. I know…right?! Pause, catch my breath…. Not believing what my eyes are seeing and confused and puzzled on top of that… I have no words….

I started crying, it was a cry of relief. I cried because he didn’t forget about me, he wasn’t disappointed in me, he did love me and because I felt the pain of missing my dad, the pain that had been sidebarred because of all those other stories my mind made up to justify the non existence of my treasure.

It turns out that the night prior Jim had a dream. He often says he doesn’t dream, so this was different for him. In his dream his mom (who passed away 3 years prior) was leading him around a house. Showing him this and that-but to Jim this dream and his mom were telling him to have another look at the dollhouse and so he did.

Where I would say ”don't force it,” he forced it! There he found my “treasure,” it was in the same place Tammy’s was- but it wasn’t loose, the humidity caused it to be stuck on the inside and therefore there wasn’t a rattle clueing us in on the gift it held.

I carried that cylinder in my purse for awhile. I wanted it with me, it made me feel seen and heard and loved. Today you will find the cylinder with its contents on the front porch of my blue dollhouse, that my dad created custom only for me. I pass by it at least 4 times a day if not more. And I know, my dad loved me as I did him, regardless of where I lived and what I believed. Love prevails.

Until next time.

Permalink