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Let the Kids Make a Mess — First Quarter/Nineteen Years pg46
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
We had a dozen troll dolls between us, each with a hand-made felt wardrobe. Eventually they had a cardboard mansion (roofless for hair clearance), and then a town built for them out of more deconstructed cardboard boxes. Turns out designing, building and furnishing troll houses was far more engaging than playing with them in structures we had already made, so the village expanded… — From Chapter 2
I was the oldest. My sister was a year and a half younger than me, and my brother a year and a half younger than her. Joan had the three of us in four years. Her joke was, “And then I found out what caused it.”
I only realized while writing a memoir how unusual it was for three siblings ages 6–10 to spend a year constructing a cardboard village, making furniture and creating wardrobes for its inhabitants. My little brother could sew on sequins and glue houses together. Today he supervises the construction and renovation of important buildings.
My sister and I have both survived and thrived as artists and designers for over forty years. That our mother made a room and materials available, then left us to it was rather unusual as well. In the many places we lived more than one neighborhood child would incredulously blurt, “Wow! Your mom lets you make a mess?!” Mom did bless her great big messy heart — even after we discovered paper maché and needed to cook flour/glue concoctions on her stove.
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