It was a bold experiment in my mind, perhaps an early inquiry into the workings of reality. Prayer mingled God with Santa Claus: if I prayed hard enough, I would get a beautiful dollhouse in my room. I cleared a space for it between my bed and the door. I was six or seven years old. I might have seen dollhouses at friends’ houses or on television or in the Sears Roebuck catalogue.
It didn’t work: I found this challenging. Were the nuns wrong about prayer? Was I doing it wrong? To my mind then, praying meant kneeling: had I not stayed on my knees long enough? I remember opening my waking eyes with keen expectation, only to find the absence of a dollhouse.
And, of course, a dollhouse is a perfectly normal toy for a six- or seven-year-old girl but I speculate now that I sought order: a family of figurines in a pleasant, ordered space designed for my domestic scenarios. No temper tantrums. No slammed doors. No hurled plates or wooden spoons. No threats. Just pastel colors, gingham, smiling faces, all under the control of my imagination, my desire.
The perfect dollhouse did not materialize that Christmas or any Christmas but fortunately I continued my experiments with prayer.
I bought the perfect dollhouse — several of them, in fact — for my daughters. Their father controlled their home with temper tantrums and threats.
No one has to persuade me that the unexamined life is intolerable.
Christine O