Before
Jack was arranging for a doll house for his wife Joan who had always adored little things and she now had so many of them that they really did need a proper home to live in.
Even as a young girl Joan was drawn to the tiny and often overlooked things that make up the world around us.
We have a way of thinking about the size of things that is incorrect in every way – we think of large things as being either scary or safe depending on how we are leveraging their size.
On the other hand, we think of small or tiny objects as being less than.
Some of the most powerful objects and people have come in small packages and they were overlooked until they found a way to make the rest of the world take notice of them.
Simply put small is small only in the minds of people who think this way.
The house design had taken months of corresponding between the doll house makers whose 102-year-old shop was located in Derbyshire just out of London. As this was Jack’s first time building a home whose dimensions were in 1:12 scale he had a lot to learn.
However, Jack was an intelligent man who asked all the right questions and he quickly understood that he needed to make a lot of decisions in a short time and so these needed to be decisions that were made based on all the available data. Once he understood these details, he began to have fun and started to assemble a home in his mind’s eye.
As he ordered shingles for the roof and arranged for wall sconces in the second-floor landing via mail he would not add them into the doll house of his mind until he received correspondence back from Derbyshire confirming that they had been added. So it was that after 10 months of back and forth Jack received a letter from the master builder advising him that his home would be packaged and wrapped the following day and then placed on a sea container which should arrive in the next 6-12 weeks.
Now it was finally time for Joan to get excited! She had loved the evenings that she and Jack had spent pouring over the tiny house designs discussing possible changes and talking through ideas for extra cupboards and the perfect spot for a clandestine cubbyhole or two.
However, she did not have Jacks brain which was able to look at blueprints as though they were three dimensional. Joan could only see flat paper with lines and odd shapes which all had to be explained to her. Last week they had sent their final letter and in reply had been advised that it was taken to a ship which had left its port two days ago. Finally, her house was on its way to her and although she was 67 years old, she found herself counting down the sleeps!
Jack had to go to the local post office, produce proof that he was the correct owner of the package and then two of the stock room lads had helped him to put it into the back of his car. The wooden box fitted into his car but only with the back seats lying flat. Jack phoned his son when he got home to ask for help getting it into the house. The room that the doll house was destined to go into was on the second floor and at 70 Jack knew that he could not get this large box up the stairs alone. His son and two friends arrived that afternoon and they all managed to get the box into the correct room with little fuss. Opening the box was quite a process which took much longer than any of them imagined but it was worth the wait. The large sturdy box inside the crate was beautifully decorated with a picture of a simple house which every child has drawn at one time or another. Around the side of the box was the name of the manufactures which in this case were Walmsley Victorian Houses, Derbyshire, England. The large box cover was removed and underneath was yards and yards of tissue paper in black and white which needed to be painstakingly removed.
Finally they were all able to see the face of the house itself. A moment later the four men had the house in their hands and popped it with some ceremony in the exact spot that Joan had shown them earlier. They all stood back and agreed that it was a handsome house and that she had chosen a point in the room where it became the object that all eyes would fall upon as you walked into or past the room.
Once Joan had fed her son and his friends with as many scones, slices and chocolate treats as they could stomach, she packaged up the rest and sent them all out the door with containers full of the extras which they could take home to their wives and children. Joan was French and so food was a part of her soul and she had become an accomplished cook before the age of 10. Joan also loved people and the more people the better! She was known as the most thoughtful of hostesses and she would always find her guests extra pillows, second helpings and was continually topping up everyone’s glasses. She managed to do all of this in such a way as she never seemed frazzled or concerned but appeared to be just another party goer. There were many couples who met Joan for the first time as they asked the lady next to them who made the fabulous chocolate creations only to discover she was both their maker and the owner of the home they were in.
Joan waved the final car down the driveway and then closed her front door. She was tingling with excitement because although she had enjoyed the unveiling of the house itself, she knew that there were two other large boxes that held the extra furniture and furnishings for her new home. Joan had been thinking about a name for her new home for weeks now but the right one had yet to arrive. As she the closed the door and turned to walk into the house a name came to her in a flash – Hope House, its exactly how she felt in that moment, full of hope.
She took the first box down and took off its lid and then waded through black and white tissue paper until her hands found the first smaller box which had been cleverly wedged into the larger one along with many other smaller boxes. In some cases, the item itself had been secreted into the walls of the large box as the item was so bespoke a box for its measurements was not available. She spent the next few hours taking out small coffee tables, rugs and even a self-portrait which Jack had commissioned in 1:12 scale. Her nose looked a little bit too large but she supposed that would be an easy mistake when trying to paint a human nose in such tiny proportions. She also collected the items that she already had and found that they had done a masterful job of ensuring the collection looked as though it had always been together when in fact it was a lifetimes collection which had been purchased from the age of four and a half until just last year.
They had come to her from all over the world and many had been picked up during the Second World War. She had been fascinated to discover that doll houses had become incredibly popular during this period in time because so many peoples home had been bombed during the war and these people had turned to miniature versions as a way of honoring what they had lost. Many of these people arranged for tiny items to be expertly made by those who were best known for making normal sized furniture.
One of the companies who took on these commissions with relish was Harrington’s who made those chairs you see in period pieces with very spindly legs that never looked like they could do the job. Joan had many Harrington items in her collection and loved each of them in differing ways. She was finally able to see why she needed a home to put her collections into – it was because all together they told a story and each item helped to elevate the one next to it and so on.
Joan unveiled her home and its contents to the ladies of the Miniature Society that she belonged to at their next meeting on the last Tuesday of the month. The ladies all had a wonderful couple of hours picking up various items and generally playing although they would never have admitted to doing something so childlike.
Many, many years later there came a day when Jack had to pack up the house, return all its contents into small boxes and padded containers before finally closing the two front panels of the Victorian dollhouse for the final time.
Joan had gone ahead of him to make a cup of tea in heaven and he was doing all the tasks he knew he must complete before he could join her for high tea in the very cozy corner that Joan had prepared for them both – he was looking forward to that. He had no idea what shop to send such a precious belonging to but he knew that the Hospice shop would find the right place on his behalf.
He would forever be grateful that a place existed that understood death and somehow managed to pull aside the long dark curtains that surrounded it so that all could clearly see that on this side death was simply a station to receive a ticket for a new destination. Your ticket would only be available on the last day of your life and not a day before.
During
The large box arrived at the local railway station on a stunning mid-winter day in 2nd July. Pop the station master phoned Mrs. Hope on her mobile and advised her the local hospice had sent her a large parcel but that there was still money owing on the postage and he could not release the box to either herself or Mr. Hope until that had been paid for, in full. When Mrs. Hope enquired about the amount, she was told that it was missing an entire 7 cents. “It seems amazing that they sent it at all” said Mrs. Hope sarcastically only to be told that he agreed with her by reply. She promised she would pop by that very day, pay the missing 7 cents and retrieve her parcel.
She arrived at about 2pm and paid Pop 10 cents for the missing postage (because one and two cent coins had been decommissioning a decade before). She had Pop and a couple of other boys help her get the bulky parcel into her car and then she started back for the shop.
While driving back to her store on this Friday morning Mrs. Hope found her eyes darting all over the place. They were in the middle of a very cold winter but the frost of the morning had given way to a beautifully blue sky and everything looked as though it had just come home from the cleaners. She could see little bits of colour everywhere and the whole town looked as though it had just gotten back from having a golly good clean. She waved at some of the people on the main street and eventually came to the back driveway of her small store. She expertly backed the car down the lane so that they could easily remove the large package from her small van.
Mr. Hope was working on a new project that had something to do with large pieces of wood being fused onto smaller ones, Mrs. Hope did try to listen to her husband when he described his ideas but her mind often wandered to other places without her knowledge or consent. So it was that she often found herself saying “that sounds wonderful darling” when in fact she had no idea what he had just described. Mr. Hope however was a master craftsman and so she was usually right – the final product was almost always wonderful.
He stopped his current task and together with help from their neighbors they managed to get the large parcel onto her worktable for further inspection. He removed all the outer casings until they had a number of large boxes that all appeared full of fascinating objects. Then they discovered the house itself and began to understand that this was a collection of objects that went together.
An envelope was stuck to the front door of the house by its knocker which was shaped like a bumble bee. Mrs. Hope opened the letter and realized it was from her good friend Anna who worked at the national office of the Mary Potter Hospice. She laid out a little of the houses origins and explained it was being sent to her specifically because she knew that Mrs. Hope adored small things and so would be able to find the perfect forever home for this house of small stature and its contents. Mrs. Hope could not wait to play!
Mrs. and to be honest Mr. Hope both had an enjoyable two days putting the house back together and dressing each small room. The house had been electrically wired while it was being built and the moment, they were able to turn all the lights on was quite something. They both stood back and admired the effect of the small home with the warm glow of tiny lamps and sconces and agreed that it looked utterly beautiful. Usually when such a specific object found its way to Mrs. Hope, she already had a customer in mind but on this occasion, she came up blank. She would have to sit back and see what happened next which she was happy to do.
The answer arrived the very next day and because the person in question was a local, she took the time to talk with Mrs. Hope as she passed her shop. She explained that she had a Great Niece who was about to turn six and that she simply had no idea what to get for her. Mrs. Hope asked a number of questions, liked the answers she received and suggested that she step into the workroom at the back of the store. Once there the Great Aunt put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from shrieking and then spent an enjoyable couple of hours playing with the house and its contents alongside Mrs. Hope. In the end it was obvious that a more perfect present would never be forthcoming and that this needed to become Aiko’s home.
After
Aiko had just celebrated her sixth birthday last week but she was told that her Great Aunt still had a present for her. However they would need to drive to her home in order to pick it up. Aiko had only met this Great Aunt on a couple of occasions so was not expecting much but she did love a good long drive so that she could practice her reading. They had just started to sound various parts of the longer words in order to put them together and thus begin reading all on her own and not just from memory which is how she had in the past remembered some of her good night stories word for word.
So it was that Aiko found herself strapped into her car seat and then taken on a windy drive to meet a Great Aunt and pick up a birthday present. She had no idea that she was about to make a memory which in later life would become so precious to her for many different reasons. You never know when those moments are going to find you but I believe we usually know them when they do.
The two sisters were excited to see each other and spent a long time hugging and exclaiming over what the other was wearing. Eventually they all walked down the drive way and into the house – in the entrance way was a table that usually held things like wallets, dog leashes and mobile phones but which today had the most exquisite doll house that Aiko had ever seen. Because the house was on a table the rooms themselves were at her eye level and she found herself opening the two sides of the house before she had asked for approval to do so. Her mother and great aunt understood why this had occurred the moment she noticed the house – it was simply irresistible.
The Great Aunt was able to leave her sister and Aiko playing with the house while she popped off to make a spider drink for Aiko and find some ginger beer for herself and her sister. She brought the drinks back into the entrance way and then helpfully turned on some lights around the house so that they could all view its contents easily. There the three of them stood, sat and kneeled in front of the home and spent a fabulous afternoon playing … nether sister had bothered to forget how to play as neither could see of a reason to stop in the first place.
The house was finally packed into its boxes for the last time and then it was transported back to Aiko’s house and placed on a table in her room. Aiko insisted on taking every item out of the box herself, considered each and then placed them in the correct spot within the house. Aiko could not decide which miniature item was her favorite – was it the tiny straw hat complete with a tiny pink ribbon or was it the wedding cake of four tiers that was on the kitchen bench? She also loved the wee family members who lived in the house and she enjoyed moving them from one room to another and with time she named all of them. She felt that the house itself needed a name and because Mrs. Hope had sold the house to her Great Aunt, she felt that should be included. She decided to call the abode Hope House.
Aiko played with the house her entire life and gifted it to her oldest daughter when she was born but she ensured that the older sister allowed her younger sibling to play with it as well. The house was passed onto this younger sister who in turn gifted it but this time to her oldest son. And so, the house was passed through many owners over the years but it was adored by them all and played with for hours.
Some people think that houses such as these should never be gifted to young children but I think they forget that young children are in fact just young humans.
We must never stop playing no matter how old we are.