Paddy Eger's Blog - Posts Tagged "growing-up"
My Playhouse
Back in the late 1940’s, few girls had life-size playhouses. My Dad built one for me using the wooden floor from my big wooden playpen as a base. I sat nearby on my willow-branch swing and watched it grow.
My lovely one-room space was about five feet tall, four feet wide and five feet deep. It had “real walls”, a shingled exterior walls and a pitched shake roof. The front door was a rescued six-pane window to which Dad added a small door knob. Out the front, I saw our backdoor steps and the sidewalk. Through the side windows I viewed my swing on one side and the back gate on the other. If anyone approached, I’d know.
The inside held my wooden table and its two matching chairs. They filled the space leaving just enough room for two little kids to move around.
I kept my china tea set on the tiny shelves in the side wall and used an old, square tin lunch pail for my plastic, everyday dishes. Mom made curtains from remnants and I hung a framed cloth picture of a Scotty dog my grandma had stitched alongside magazine photos to decorate the walls. My playhouse was as cozy as our real house.
I loved to play alone out there, coloring or drawing. When my little girl friends came to play, we had tea parties. We served imaginary tea and grass yanked from the nearby lawn. Mom’s real cookies and red Kool-Aid were tastier.
The playhouse provided years of fun as well as real and imagined adventures. Neighbor girls brought over their dolls and dress-up clothes. The neighbor boys threw pinecones and fought over who got to be inside and who had to wait. I hated it when they got inside and held the door closed. I was afraid they’d tear up my pictures or bust a window or the front door.
As it happened, a door window pane was broken. I swerved my tricycle wheel into the door as I tried to ride away from Junior, a neighbor boy. Dad fixed it the next weekend.
While I was small, I’d swing, imagining I could touch the edge of the playhouse roof with my shoe. No matter how high I pumped, the roof was beyond my reach. By the time I could tap the roof, I’d gotten too old for the playhouse; it became a storage space for folding lawn furniture.
When I began my ballet trilogy, I used many tidbit from my life, including the playhouse. It made my characters'lives more realistic. And, if you know me and where I grew up,you'll find lots of familair references; maybe even times we shared the playhouse, the swing or our neighborhood.
My lovely one-room space was about five feet tall, four feet wide and five feet deep. It had “real walls”, a shingled exterior walls and a pitched shake roof. The front door was a rescued six-pane window to which Dad added a small door knob. Out the front, I saw our backdoor steps and the sidewalk. Through the side windows I viewed my swing on one side and the back gate on the other. If anyone approached, I’d know.
The inside held my wooden table and its two matching chairs. They filled the space leaving just enough room for two little kids to move around.
I kept my china tea set on the tiny shelves in the side wall and used an old, square tin lunch pail for my plastic, everyday dishes. Mom made curtains from remnants and I hung a framed cloth picture of a Scotty dog my grandma had stitched alongside magazine photos to decorate the walls. My playhouse was as cozy as our real house.
I loved to play alone out there, coloring or drawing. When my little girl friends came to play, we had tea parties. We served imaginary tea and grass yanked from the nearby lawn. Mom’s real cookies and red Kool-Aid were tastier.
The playhouse provided years of fun as well as real and imagined adventures. Neighbor girls brought over their dolls and dress-up clothes. The neighbor boys threw pinecones and fought over who got to be inside and who had to wait. I hated it when they got inside and held the door closed. I was afraid they’d tear up my pictures or bust a window or the front door.
As it happened, a door window pane was broken. I swerved my tricycle wheel into the door as I tried to ride away from Junior, a neighbor boy. Dad fixed it the next weekend.
While I was small, I’d swing, imagining I could touch the edge of the playhouse roof with my shoe. No matter how high I pumped, the roof was beyond my reach. By the time I could tap the roof, I’d gotten too old for the playhouse; it became a storage space for folding lawn furniture.
When I began my ballet trilogy, I used many tidbit from my life, including the playhouse. It made my characters'lives more realistic. And, if you know me and where I grew up,you'll find lots of familair references; maybe even times we shared the playhouse, the swing or our neighborhood.
