As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to realize that my dad’s favorite mantra, “Sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” really is true.
I find this particularly applies well to my Facebook Marketplace finds.
Though they have made me endlessly happy, they have made my husband, Justin, leery of answering my questions about what he’s doing after work.
The last time I asked that, after all, he ended up with a vintage, nacho cheese colored velvet recliner and its ottoman wedged in the back of his pickup truck, following a very shady encounter with the guy selling it, who gave off the vibes that he had perhaps stolen it from his own grandmother, and had her somewhere tied up to something.
I have learned that, rather than deal with hearing Justin’s favorite mantra, “But, where are you planning to PUT IT,” it is much easier to just mysteriously disappear for a while,
and come home later with the deed done.
“Sorry, Babe. It is here in our living room. You are already too late.”
I have filled many a hole in my heart with Facebook Marketplace finds:
The antique turquoise dresser, the vintage yellow cruiser with a basket, my recliner, several plants, a stuffed alligator pair;
But this one…This one topped them all.
I had to have it, if for nothing more than for the heart repair.
When I was younger, all I wanted in this world was a dollhouse –
The big, fancy kind only rich girls had in picture books, with lifelike miniature fruit bowls, and real ceramic bathtubs.
There was a stationary store on Main Street that sold the furniture for them, and I would regularly ride my bike downtown, and stand at the display window, feeling the way one does always on the outside looking in.
There was something magical about a dollhouse, a forever “You’re welcome to come in.”
Maybe it was the way you could still have one foot in the real world, full of its responsibilities and lessons other people expected you to learn by your age, while also being partially in a world where you were free to be you; Free to envision, and create.
Maybe it was the beginning of the writer in me, seeking any way I could to make a story appear.
Perhaps, even at a young age, I knew those could come from blank walls and open windows so easily, but, whatever the reason, I loved them and their tiny things.
I was not a girl that had a dollhouse, though.
That tiny, cozy living room with battery powered flickering fireplace would forever feel out of reach.
My parents had pressing things to attend to, and too many bills to pay.
I shared a room with my brother at that time, that was split precisely down the middle by a plywood wall my dad had built for a semblance of privacy.
Yes, I wanted a dollhouse so badly.
There just wasn’t the money or space.
However, I am living proof that deferring a lifelong dream doesn’t make it actually go away.
This became obvious the other day when there it was, looking back at me on Marketplace:
The most perfect dollhouse.
It had a few missing shingles, (kind of like me) and could probably use some sprucing, but
I just sat there looking at the screen, transported back in time to a hundred trips downtown to a stationary store window on a banana bike seat.
It was calling my name.
Only twenty dollars?
Twenty dollars for solid wood, and a porch rail, and cute little shutters?
Was twenty dollars all it would take for my dreams to come flooding back to the center from all the hidden corners of me?
I messaged the lady selling it, and made plans to pick it up the next day,
and then I didn’t explain where I was going, or where I planned to put it at all when I grabbed my keys.
I just drove to the next town, happy in a way I cannot explain, all because I have learned that you cannot spend your whole life hoping someone else will provide everything you long for.
Sometimes you just have to fulfill your own dreams.
I cannot describe the feelings I had closing my trunk with that dollhouse inside that day.
I couldn’t describe them to my husband, either, when he ended up finding out where I had gone, and what I had come home carrying.
My husband was out in the garden when I returned home, and I snuck by with it, not even wanting to explain why I needed it.
I settled it gently in the old wooden shed in the back yard until I have some time to begin restoring it properly:
New wallpaper, new floors, new shingles, new paint.
My important project: The resurrection of a dream.
That night, I was surprised as tears came to my eyes, picturing it sitting out there in the shed, with all of its empty rooms, just waiting for me.
It was as if it was, like my husband, also asking me what I planned to do with it,
just in a much softer way; Genuinely curious to hear my ideas that could carry it beyond its current emptiness.
Suddenly I saw that dollhouse as a version of myself:
A little weathered, but excited for next chapters, and ready to be filled up by a thousand tiny things.
I always wanted a dollhouse, and yet I see I am the dollhouse.
What I wanted was me.
It took a dollhouse on Marketplace to remind me that I am far more valuable that I appear on the outside,
and I, too, am so worthy of the filling.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
