Collections

The first twenty years of my life I was expected to find something I loved very much and collect it.  That way I could buy things on vacation and people would know what to give me as gifts. My mother suggested salt and pepper shakers and having no real affinity for anything else (or even really them) I jumped on it and collected them for years, but I never sat around looking at them with great pleasure.

One day I realized I had collected quite a selection of turtles and that became the new collection.(Because everyone KNOWS you have to collect something if you are a middle class American woman, right?) Anyway, that lasted about thirty five years, but when I moved back to Illinois from North Carolina, I left it all behind and it was packed up by my son and put away. I don't really miss most of them.

If you had asked me last week, what I collect now, I would have said, nothing, but that's not true. I just realized that my newest hobby is my miniature dollhouse and it is truly a passion, which I think collections are supposed to be. I have always loved miniature things. The Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle at the Science and Industry Museum in Chicago was always one of my favorite places to visit.

I began modestly enough with cardboard boxes and moved on to the Playmobile Victorian Mansion. Then I bought a brownstone dollhouse with three floors and now I have the huge three and a half story bookcase dollhouse, which is my favorite because I can sit in my chair and see all the rooms.

I love redecorating it. I love shopping for exquisite pieces for it and I love just sitting here staring at it. Now that is a real collection.