As I turn this project into a bizarre family funhouse, there is nothing that says my family more than books. I’ve become a tiny book maker. I researched popular novels for each decade and picked books that meant something to me or figured in family lore. A couple are period gags like Peyton Place.

I searched for old images of original dust jackets, and printed them in tiny scale. I worked out a process for stapling pages together as making leaves didn’t work so well. In some cases, I’ve had to make a spine and back cover. That was very laborious, Igor. I’ve also made a start on the periodical library for the girl’s room using magazine covers from 1976 that I actually remembered when I saw them online.

The George Washington book ends came! I put two Fitzgeralds between them, Tender and Gatsby.

My latest changes:

• Made light fixtures for the master bedroom and the bathroom. I used old pieces of jewelry and one of the clips you put pictures in.
• Made a Geneva High School-like pennant with remnant patches from our swimming team days
• Reworked the rug in the girl’s room, adding a border with some lace I had.
• Made V mails and letters for the D-Day room.
• Painted the Liberace style gold Ben Franklin & pedestal white.
• Printed and framed copies of art from my family to hang in the 50s and 60s rooms.

A bunch of stuff came in the last ten days. It’s always so exciting to unwrap things and place them. I revert to being 8. These are toys, after all.

The haul:  baby high chair, hat and umbrella, side table, pink bunny rabbit stuffed animals, business paperwork package, faceted crystal wineglasses, exterior bunting.

The tin types are absolutely real. I was a bit pissed at the slapdash way they were tossed in a box as one had a little damage. Two tintypes need frames and I’m trying to work out the best way to do this on a preservation level. I may make a picture rail for them which can then attach to the wall.

I really love the bunting. Now it’s perpetually summer and always the Fourth of July. Don’t worry, you’ll see it all in the final reveal.

I wasn’t expecting to find Sally’s dollhouse plans but of course she had kept a file. It was all in a green envelope marked ‘dollhouse 1976.’ I’d set it aside because I thought it was just going to be articles she’d clipped. But the file is a cache of wonder. It has me a bit overwhelmed.

I’ve seen my mother’s handwriting a thousand times but as I paged through, there was a vise around my throat. Here were samples of all the wallpapers, neatly folded, in pristine condition. An ironed sample of pink gingham ribbon. Notes about other dollhouses and elements she took from them, comments from the old Hobby Shop and their advice. She’d listed all the art she’d put in the house and what museums it was in.

And then I found the blue prints. She made blue prints. There, with all her careful measurements to tenth of inches, the fully sketched and realized house in elevation, front and side.

It was all so immediate. For an instant she wasn’t dead, and we were back at the old house at the kitchen table. I felt all the joy she’d had in this project; how much it had meant to her. This careful documentation tore at my heart. How she must have longed for someone to appreciate all this. Someone who would have understood at a deep level, that this wasn’t just about a dollhouse.

I failed her. I simply hadn’t been capable of getting it back then. Now that I do, I feel such sorrow. I curse myself for not telling her thank you for this dollhouse. What the house means to me because she made it, that it’s beautiful, that she has managed somehow to bring me enchantment from beyond the grave. That I still marvel at her.

I closed my eyes against tears and just sat there holding the file. The dead are silent. Generally.

Then something spooky happened. A small picture fell out of the file. It was cut from a magazine, a bit of a unicorn tapestry, with a caption. I picked it up and read:

Amid flowers, birds, and beasts, a princely court pursues the magical unicorn in the forests of a medieval world.

Remember me mentioning this Tudor wallpaper border for dollhouses a while back? I wanted it badly but it was out of character for the house, so I didn’t buy it. It seemed like it had been similar to this tapestry, so I went back and looked at it. It was almost identical. There was the unicorn.

So, reader, I bought it.

Life is strange and filled with twists and turns. Now I’m my mother. I sit where she did, laboring over this house for reasons I don’t really comprehend. No one will ever get this dollhouse for me, either. It’s just us.

But that’s alright. You sent me a unicorn today and it will keep me going.

The blueprint stash