SYLVIA SATURDAY

Yesterday, I mentioned my total illiteracy (perhaps that should be illimagery) as to posting photos. I'd read the tutorials, clicked and clacked and browsed, and just could not seem to make the pictures appear in the little screen where the words live.
And a new friend, RobinfromCA,

http://weareflyingnow.blogspot.com/2009/06/cloche-party-and-award-time.html

kindly commented here and gave me the easy-guide-to-life, so I think there's hope yet. I started out at Cindy's house, http://romantichome.blogspot.com/ which is just delightfully romantic, and went on to other links.

The theme yesterday was "Cloches" and the lovely things you could display in and under them. There were little vignettes and scenes and seashells and flowers and perfume bottles and all sorts of small still-lifes, enchanting as the view into a big sugar Easter Egg. I strolled around people's parlors, bedrooms---bathrooms, even, taking in the beautiful arrangements and pale colors and the soothe of the neatness of them. And I wanted those. I wanted ALL of those, the IDEA of them, and the ACTUAL of them, in their frozen, pristine glory; they bespeak a serenity and an artist's hand and most of all, a tidy milieu that escapes my capabilities.
And the cloches themselves---they've been accumulated and acquired at antiques stores, after their lives of nestling a fragrant serving of cepes sous cloche, whisked dramatically away by a gloved hand to release the aromas a minute. Or perhaps they harbored a bird's nest in a small boy's room, dutifully dusted day after day by the upstairs maid, as the boy grew to man and the nest grew limp with the sag of Time, and the whole thing sold, nest and all, with the thump of the auction hammer. The whole morning, as I came back and looked in, was a Martha Stewart Dream of Heaven.
The only thing in my house remotely approaching such hermetic tableaux is on the pass-through from kitchen to breakfast area---a plain old Wal-Mart cakedome which has been home for several years to my little dollhouse kitchen. The three small white plastic appliances, along with a tiny buffet with one reluctantly-sliding drawer, are all that's left of my childhood's playthings. They lay still and abandoned for many years, wrapped in Kleenex and snugged into a box in my parents' big closet, until I found them while rummaging for a proper tie for Daddy to wear to my Mother's funeral.

I'd spied the pale blue of the box-bottom in a stack above my head, and, with a little frisson of recognition---the small flowers which dotted the lid of my teenage stationery box. Heavy, it was, as I got the step-stool from the kitchen to reach it down. And inside, the Blue Willow teaset long lost and longed for, asked about, given up on. The cups and saucers and small pot and its two cohorts were heavy in the bottom, with the tray and four small plates, each piece wrapped in yellowing tissue. Two of the cups still held the dreg-stains of dolltea in the bottom, and though I've dusted all the outsides, I cannot bring myself to wash those cups, to send down the drain those last vestiges of my long-ago self.

And the little white kitchen---I try to recall the dollhouse, and cannot. I DO know the kitchen was an unnatural PINK, painted in the dead of night with my Mother's nail polish.  And I remember the meals and parties I cooked in that kitchen, my imaginings soaring beyond any magical teaparty as I worked. And so I have it. The magic of childhood remains, mingled with a bit of reality. Guests look and say "Awwwww!" and then look again. Then they laugh.

Click on picture for a front-row seat; these are so close you'll get a crick in your neck:



And a clearer look, sans cloche:




As my friend Keetha says, "Just keepin' it real."