Mockingbird Hill Cottage

It’s a gray day today but I find it beautiful. It’s a Sunday so our normally busy road is quiet. The autumnal colors are just gorgeous and with a cloudy sky they have become muted and almost sepia-like.

I’m going to rest today. Between working on Anastasia, coaching Ben three times via Zoom, and wrestling with blog problems, it’s been an intense week. (By the way, the blog is fixed.) Today? Reading, some laundry and cleaning (but only a little) some list-making and then, later in the afternoon, the Red Sox.

In two weeks I’ll be heading to Brooklyn. It once seemed so far off, but now it’s just around the corner. I’ve never been on a movie set, I have no idea where to go or where I will work on that set but I’m going to ask Jim to show me around.

I’m more and more convinced that I need ‘play’ in my life. Of course, the theater is  play in the purest sense of the word. But in my downtime, I also need to play. Dollhouses, miniatures, stuffed animals, charming little egg cups, and now, Blythe dolls in the form of Sophie and Imogen.

You remember ‘playing dolls.’ That’s what we used to call it in my neighborhood. Not ‘playing with my dolls’, but ‘playing dolls’. “I’m going to go play dolls with Kay, Mom!” Kay, my dear friend of, I think, 65 years or so, lived on the next block. Her parents were my godparents. They also happened to give me my first egg cup. Kay and I would play with Barbies for hours – sometimes at her house, sometimes at mine. Edith, my godmother, had big books of wallpaper samples. I can see them even now. We found patterns we liked and papered the inside of our Barbie cases. I used a dixie cup suspended with a piece of pipe cleaner as a hanging light. We also made houses out of shoeboxes. All of this was the precursor to the fairly recent reappearance of dollhouses and miniatures in my life. And now, dolls are reappearing.

Play. It’s so important to me. It grounds me in a way nothing else can, especially during these tumultuous times.

I was coaching Ben recently. I use our office and I carefully try to position my laptop so that Ben can’t see the Beacon Hill or Don’s collection of Big Boys. But, eagle-eyed Ben has, on two separate occasions, noticed both of those things. And he was fascinated – wanted to see the dollhouse up close. So I gave him a little tour. I briefly wondered if he might think me wildly eccentric. I don’t think he does. It turns out his mom has a dollhouse she wants to work on.

Am I becoming a bit more eccentric as I get older? Most likely. But I hope it’s a pleasant eccentricity – harmless and maybe even a little interesting.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.