THE DOLL HOUSE

Letter D

I can't really remember when I got my doll house for Christmas. It must have been when I still lived with my grandparents. Somebody in the family knew a carpenter who made a wooden doll house for me with two rooms. One was the kitchen the other was a bedroom together with a little living area, a sofa, chairs and a table. As there was no money yet in occupied Germany just after WWII,  people used to swap things they needed.  The Deutsche Mark was introduced in 1948. The carpenter had children and my mother could knit, so she knitted pullovers and baby outfits for the kids and got the doll house instead. It was especially made for me.

I can't remember the original furniture the carpenter had made, not even that I played with it, I remember a Christmas in 1951 when I was 8 years old and had moved with my parents to Bonn.



I tried to find some pictures on internet to show how I remember it, I haven't seen it anymore since probably 59 years ! When my father died I took it with me to Waterloo and it must be in our attic. One day I have to look after it.

The kitchen was well equipped I even had a little electric stove and a pan and could make tiny little pancakes. I had dishes, cutlery, and cooking pots all in doll house sizes. My American aunt had sent me a little family, there was mum, dad two children and a baby in a pram. I was the only one amongst my friends who had such a perfect doll house even with little figurines.

Unfortunately I couldn't play that much with my doll house, because for an unknown reason it was only put up on the 1st of December and disappeared the 2nd January. In my father's family it was tradition that girls were only allowed to play with the doll house during the Christmas time, for the boys it was the same with a train.

Of course I hated when it was packed in cartons again and disappeared for a year ! I was mostly heard broken and really hated my father for this. My mother had nothing to say, she would have let the doll house standing in my room the whole year. So each year it was the same drama, I cried, my mother and father argued and at the end my doll house disappeared in the attic or in the basement I don't remember.

I think my father never realized what harm he did to me, he just did the same like he was brought up and I think his childhood hasn't been very funny. My grandpa was an imposing person and my cousins and I were afraid of him. He wasn't at all like my maternal grandpa with his warm and generous heart.

This yearly Christmas drama left traces and I swore that if one day I had children, trains or doll houses would never disappear for a whole year !

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