The Attic

B"H

Dream World of a Different Era

Golden hair with gentle waves, she looked like a Russian princess to me.  Not that we learned any great love for the czar and his family.  All that I heard was that G-d should keep him far from us.  But this Russian princess had her own chest of clothing and her own dressing table and chair with a perfect little brush that matched it all.  I spent hours playing with the attic doll.  My sister, on the other hand, found an exquisite wooden horse.  That is who she wanted every time we visited Uncle's big old attic in the big old green house.      Cereal and milk was the food of choice for the horse.  Bailah said that horses eat oats and this cereal had oats.  I don't know about the milk.  My princess had tea and cookies.  And so did I.    

How long did we spend in that attic?  Who knows?  Untethered by time we spent our summer afternoons with Uncle.  When the fall began to find us, life stirred, it hustled and bustled, and carried us to a New Year with a New Book of Life where good, healthy, safe lives were supposed to be inscribed therein for us all.  

The Big Old Green House

B"H

A Shelter For Us All

It was green. It was old because there was still a carriage in the carriage house and two stalls for horses.  And it was a shelter for us because my uncle loved us all so much.  

We felt that the house had secrets.  Special hidden staircases that allowed you to appear out of no where.  A jail in the basement and tunnels that led you out of the house to cellar doors three houses down by the big old oak tree.  The sub-basement had thousands of dusty, dirty old bottles filled with something.  Who knows what was in them?  And again, more tunnels in another direction.  Those tunnels met up with brick walls.  Here and there we saw playing cards on the ground with our flashlights.  Who would be nuts enough to play cards down here?  Exploring inside was much better than hide and seek outside.  But, Uncle's neighborhood was changing.  All the big old houses were being torn down and replaced with apartment buildings.  Where once only one family lived or by our time, one old, old woman lived, now twenty families lived.  All tunnels lead to brick walls.  And the carriage was gone replaced by a car.