Dollhouse

During the final cleanout of my mother's house after she died, I found the ruins of a dollhouse in the storage shed. It had been given to me as a birthday present. I had begged for one after being enamored with the ones at a local hobby shop. These little houses were painted and warmly furnished with irrisistable miniatures of every imaginable household object, down to tiny red apples in china bowls. The one I got was empty and unpainted and it made me cry. It never occured to me that you had to paint the damn thing yourself. In the state in which I found it years later, it was a perfect image to underscore the loss of my childhood home.