Posted March 25, 2003

Appearances can be decieving.

Ask the census taker who interviewed us in 1980.

We've never had children, but we had two friends who'd started large families. Jim had made sets of blocks for each family, and while he was at it, he'd made himself a double set.

As an interesting sidelight, I'd had a set of small, painted blocks as a child, but most of mine had been rough-edged odds and ends scrounged from construction sites. Jim read somewhere that boys build towers and girls build enclosures, and that was what I mostly used my ragged set of blocks for, imprompteau dollhouses as often as not marked out by one course of wall. Few of my blocks were in proportion to each other. At first I was skeptical about Jim's enthusaism for the educational value of blocks, the way they could teach about fractions and measurement, but when I saw how neatly he could box up his squares and rectangles with their lovingly blunted edges, I was sold on the notion.

We also had in the house at the time a two storey, Barbie-sized dollhouse. Jim had made a pair of them a few years previously for the oldest girls of two of his friends. He'd designed them himself and made them from scratch, splitting the clapboard for the outside walls on his table saw, and using a carpet knife to cut out diminuitive 1/2" to a foot shingles from real shingles and nailing them on one by one. We'd repainted our own house not too long ago, and we painted the houses and trim with left-over house paint. However, Molly had moved, and there wasn't room in the new apartment for her dollhouse, so it had come back to us for storage. We turned its rooms to the wall.

One year Jim had answered his sister's repeated questions of "What do you want for Christmas" with "a raccoon." Frustrated in her ambition to make him something creative, she'd bought him a six-in tall plush raccoon. We put Rocky inside the dollhouse, looking out with his ingratiating grin and his stumpy plush arms outstretched in apparent delight.

When I'd been learing to crochet, I'd brought the magazine with my current project to a family get-together. Jim's grandmother had looked at it, and jokingly pointed out an aligator. "You can make that for me!" she teased, and having enough time before Christmas, I had indeed made it. She was quite surprised, but she kept it around the house. Upon her death a few years later, Ally had come home to roost. Or nest. Or whatever allilgators come home for. I placed him on the arm of the couch furthest from the dollhouse, until one day a friend draped him over the back of the couch, his pink mouth drolly open as he eyed the unsuspecting Rocky.

In addition, Jim was working on Dobbin. When I first met Dobbin, he looked just a little too much like the horse in Rocking Horse Winner for my comfort. Also, I was a little miffed that the family had room for an heirloom but not for our fine Barbie house! But as I lived with Dobbin for a few weeks, I'd since come to appreciate him. Besides, I sort of enjoyed having the use of the dollhouse. I'm not much of an interior decorator, and the dramatic situation of the alligator stalking the racoon was a coup for me in that department.

Dobbin had belonged to Molly's grandfather, and he'd been entrusted to Jim to refurbish. Jim had painted the base that suppported him a bright red accented with yellow. Dobbin's body was carved out of blocks of solid wood, which Jim covered with black fake fur. Then he painted his eyes, mouth, and nostrils, and made him a mane and a tail from the real horsehair that Molly's grandmother had provided. Jim went on to made him a saddle and bridle of leather, and forged the sturrips himself to complete Dobbin's ensemble. Any day now we were expecting the family to come and get him.

At any rate, on this particular evening, Jim had built a tower of blocks that reached unto the ceiling, and allowed me the thrill of pulling out one leg and watching it collapse with a roar of falling timber. The blocks still lay in dissaray on the living room floor when a knock came to our door.

It was a census taker who just wanted to ask us a few questions. We seated him on the piano bench next to the rocking horse. All went smoothly until he asked us how many children we had.

"None," said Jim firmly.

The census taker's pencil hovered over his form. He cocked his eyebrows. He looked to his left. Dobbin grinned at him, anxious to be taken for a spin. He turned his head. His eyes skimmed over the pile of blocks and came to rest on Ally's grinning progress toward his oblivious dinner. He looked searchingly at me.

"None," I echoed sincerely.

The pencil tapped the page and he went on to the next question. He didn't challenge our answer, but I wonder what he was thinking.

By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to the story. If you care for the background, you're welcome to copy and use it.