Tiny Things, Big Problems
Mom & I both loved miniatures, but as I grew, so did our problems.
Knott’s Berry Farm was a pathetic attempt at a Western-themed Disneyland back when I was growing up in Southern California, but we always stopped there on the way because of the miniatures. In the dimly-lit Doll Museum, a very special collection of tiny worlds was displayed behind glass in replicated rooms that belonged in the mansions of the very rich at the turn of the 20th Century. There were storefronts filled with tiny goods, as if a set from “Deadwood” had been shrunken into a perfectly scaled display. “Scale” was very important to Mom: as an artist and aesthete, she often attempted to explain how the ratio of inches to feet were essential in the recreation of correct proportions, and — — I had tuned out long ago, and wished she’d just let me enjoy the experience: a hint of our conflicts to come.
These weren’t ordinary doll houses, they were special: they had real electric lights! There was a ballroom with a chandelier and I loved watching my usually staid mother’s face light up with every teeny bulb that hung from the pressed tin ceiling. Standing side by side, we’d peer into the tiny worlds and she’d whisper as she pointed, “Look at the leaves on the tiny houseplant! It’s a pothos! Do you see the little glass sprayer next to it? It looks like it’s filled with water! And see how two leaves have brown edges?” It was the only time when I saw her experiencing a childlike joy, which was both exciting and a bit unsettling. She seemed so prim and starchy when she parented us — perhaps she would have preferred “respectable” — but when she called out a tiny detail and pointed to where she wanted me to look, it was as if we were two girls sharing this very special connection and marveling together.
But as I grew, so did the chasm between us. She resented my attempts at unfettered freedom, and I hated her passionately for constantly thwarting me. When our small family imploded, she sent me to a psychologist to learn how to cope with a missing father, violent brother, and chronically depressed mother who now rarely left her bed. And I was the one with the problem.
Edith asked me to call her by her first name, which I found odd, but her office was a wonderland. She specialized in child development, and I didn’t even have time to be resentful that here I was, a mature, sophisticated woman of fourteen, being treated as though I were a child! The indignity! My indignation vanished immediately when I walked into her office filled with toys, dolls, and best of all, on floor to ceiling shelves lining all her walls, teeny tiny objects and animals and people. I dropped all pretense of the sophisticated woman and began to explore with delight. She had placed a two foot square waist-high sandbox right in the middle of the room, and I spent my 50 minutes every week designing and creating scenarios — never once did I consider it “playing” — while Edith watched and took notes. She was tender and brilliant. A gentle question could nudge me into utilizing the objects in the sandbox to express my roiling anger at, well, everything: the world that took me for a malleable bimbo, my favored brother, who seemed to be the receptacle for our parents’ male-centric love; all the schoolboys who preferred my best friend’s vacant eyes and tiny waist to my acerbic retorts and less winsome curves, but most of all my mother, whom I knew was a sadist who enjoyed her ranking in our power dynamic that gave her the unearned right to control me.
“Pick out your mother,” Edith gently suggested on a particularly difficult day. As I scanned the rows, I considered my strategy. I didn’t want to be too obvious, so that ruled out La Diabla, a 3 inch fiery red devil woman that had caught my eye, so I stopped thinking and let my hand reach where my eyes stopped: a tiny silver bucket. It was on its side and milk was spilling out, forming a creamy puddle. I gingerly placed it on the glass coffee table where Edith’s coffee mug rested and then sat across from her. It sat there, between us, and in the silence that grew, something unwanted and uncontrollable began to force its way out of me, and the more I tried to reign it in, the harder and more forcefully it continued to push its way out. It seemed as if the entire room, all the dolls, plastic dinosaurs, and vintage green Army soldiers were all waiting and watching me as I tried with all the power I could muster to not let whatever this was out.
Edith made me sit in my growing discomfort until it could be repressed no longer. An unwanted tear slid down involuntarily. And then another. A tiny silver bucket of spilt milk, that I had presumably picked at random to try and fool my shrink. As I stared at it, it seemed to grow, not in size but in symbolic significance. It was Freudian, Jungian, metaphorical and allegorical all at once, and though I only understood a few of those ideas at the time, I knew it. It was my mother. Mom. Mommy. “Look,” she’d whisper, “See that? How the milk is spilling out in a perfect puddle?” And her joy would be doubled as she watched me, her only female child, experience exactly the same exquisite delight.
But those moments were years ago and felt like light years away. Now, instead of sharing something exciting with me, she would be sitting in her stained housecoat in front of the tv, an empty bowl and spoon on the end table declaring her most recent ice cream binge, silently daring me to question her or say anything all. Retreat. But never surrender. Angry silences were broken by scathing accusations. The tension in the house was so unbearable that Mike had left early for college and joined a fraternity just to get out.
The tiny bucket of spilled milk undulated before me as the tears that would not be contained began to spill out, and in defeat, I let them. I let go. Of it all. I sobbed, I wailed. I didn’t need to scream; I did plenty of that daily. What I needed to do was feel that pain that I thought would break me, and I did, and it didn’t.
She was waiting in the car at the curb as always. My face was probably close to unrecognizable in its pink, puffy, post-catharsis state. Silence. But instead of driving straight home, this time she pulled the station wagon into Our Place: the Bob’s Big Boy with the drive up, where the waitresses took your order from the car, and that’s where we ate. All she had to do was turn to me, and with my nod she knew exactly what to order: A Bob’s Big Boy, no cheese, fries, salad with blue cheese dressing, and a chocolate shake. There was something that pulled us closer when she said, “make that two.” The silence in the car as we ate was different now. It was lighter. We had both put down our weapons, even if it was just to pick up our burgers.
Maybe it was letting go in Edith’s office that did it, or maybe it was just the natural growing out of and into different developmental stages, but the tension between us slowly evaporated. We could discuss the future, both long and short term, without the conversation turning chaotic. Maybe I could live with Dad for a while? Maybe she could start teaching again. Should we go visit Mike at USC? Progress. Breathing room for each of us. Slowly accepting the attempts we were both making to detach, reattach, escape, return, resolve. The pain was bearable now. It was in that tiny bucket.
The last time I saw Edith was not to say goodbye, because had I known I wouldn’t see her again, I like to think I would’ve let her know how much the time I spent with her and her tiny things meant to me, and how important the healing I did with her patient guidance was. I thought it was just another session, but I didn’t return. Life was too busy: I had booked something else for that day, and when my mother asked if I wanted to reschedule, I told her I was okay; if I needed to see Edith, I’d call her. I never did. I didn’t need to.
As I left that day, she uncharacteristically reached out to me. Not for a hug, but to put something in my hand. She smiled. When I looked at what she had placed in my open palm, so did I.
