Magnificent Apple Crate Doll House by D. Grant DeMan
Our first Victoria Christmas following World War II beamed with glorious light. Gone were the blackout curtains, sirens and boc-boc-boc of practice anti-aircraft artillery. Our cousins had come home safe, and we celebrated with all the festivities we could muster.
“Remember how we struggled before the war, Joe?” said Mom, as my sister Marg and I sat down at the overburdened dinner table.
“Sure do, Pearl. But we were sure happy enough. How we put together the Doll house in ‘39.”
As through piercing eyes of the golden eagle soaring high above the blue Okanagan that morning, I see once more rippling streams of brilliant sun awaking a wondrous Christmas day. Far behind the hills lay war-rumblings. She peers down upon the DeMans, "as snug as bugs in a rug" as Mama used to say, her eternal vigilance following a path through a naked orchard past the barn to a cabin window welcoming those first rays to the room where my little sister, Margaret Joan, rouses from her crib, gold bobbed hair peeking up from beneath a flannelette sheet and Hudson's Bay blanket, watches the tot tiptoe out of the room silently, feeling warm love and expectation within the soft heart.
"Oh Don." A faint and musical cry. "Oh. Oh. Oh. Donnie. Come and see. Come look!"
Stirring from bed, I saw her blue eyes widening at something marvelous in the Christmas tree corner. I scurried across the cold plank and linoleum floor to stand on the warm bear rug beside her. Since we had managed to get an electric wire into our home, the pre-depression Christmas lights carefully preserved from the storm of a peripatetic life, glistened yellow, red and blue upon the red-green roof of a magical white doll house.
We stood there in absolute open-mouthed awe.
Our eyes roamed over the apparition from the painted red and white brick chimney to a pair of large doors with real glass windows that lay open reavealing two rooms within where a celluloid mamma and daddy with two small children were enjoying life: A loving family, busy like ours!
We sensed the presence of Daddy and Momma. Tears fill my eyes now as I remember the joy of that moment as they hugged and kissed us a rise'n shine morning because this time it was special. It was Christmas! And we basked in the glory of our incredible new house.
"Well, what do you think of that, Donnie?" Dad queried, beaming.
"I wonder who could have left this house sitting here? Margaret, who do you suppose?"
"Santa Claus?" We chimed in together.
I was proud of my observational abilities: "The cookies are gone, and the milk has been drunk."
"I guess old Saint Nick really enjoyed your baking and Beauty's creamy milk." Dad smiled at Momma.
"Well, let's see how everything works here."
Daddy joined us on the floor, lost in the fantasy of the little family, while Momma baked up a grand Christmas breakfast: Johnnycake made with our own ground cornmeal and rendered lard, big slabs of bacon with spicy garlic-laced sausages donated by the Martel family next door; served with huckleberry syrup and apricot preserves.
The aromas.....
Sawdust burning in the big iron stove, the sizzling food, the tanned bear rugs, the scent of blue pine turpentine delicately wafting through chinks in the calcimined walls; heavenly angels sang on sunshine rays spreading a joyous river of new hope across the DeMan threshold of our Zanadu. Daddy had always repeated through the hard times: "Every day in every way things are getting better and better." As the eagle, strength renewed, silently senses the moment to rise, we too felt the power of that doll house. Our love endured and now triumphed through the steel-gray night, until this great gettin’ up dawn.
Like the eagle, we had persevered, soared to overcome adversity, and revel in heaven-sent joy.
The doll house dream had visited my parents one previous night. Daddy fetched his dull old tools and commenced sawing a few apple crate boards; he'd plane and sand and whittle. He knew what he was doing, for in those years a person could manufacture nearly anything from fruit boxes. With some old greenhouse glass, nails, glue and borrowed paint, a miracle happened, though keeping the endeavor secret took ingenuity. Momma persuaded relatives and friends to send dolls and furniture for the project, crafting tiny clothing from bleached and dyed sack-cloth as she made ours on the old broken Singer. Oh the love and care that went into that work! To waylay our curiosity they'd send us walking our dog to the mailbox, or feeding the chickens. Collecting eggs was a good chore.
So we never suspected. Christmas Eve I steadied the legs of John-Thomas while Daddy removed his head cleanly, and Mom defeathered and eviscerated him: my first anatomy lesson. Later we'd make a fine mattress from his down and feathers. But now it was festival Christmas.
The golden eagle flew on, as did we, though every Christmas we brought out the doll house. Now the hard years had ended with the Axis’ defeat, Momma looked satisfied: “If we got through all that we can endure anything. And just look at the doll house!”
“Like us, it’s stood the test of time,” Daddy remarked.
We chorused, “Every day in every way, things are getting better and better.”
“You betcha!” Snug as bugs in a rug.
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