My Life-Sized Laura House

When I was eight years old, my siblings and I received a wooden playhouse for Christmas. The 6-or-7 foot tall, one room building had a pointed roof with black shingles, a tiny porch, and two glass windows placed on either side of the Dutch door, whose halves could be opened fully or with only one part open. For the first year or two, the place was filled with beanbags, half-read books, snacks, and talk of magical lands. But as my brother and sister grew up, they gradually lost interest in playing outside in our house, and I found myself the only one interested in it.

Instead of being lonely, the sole child at play, I found that house a fantastic escape. I had just started reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, and found our playhouse to be the perfect replica of all of Laura's houses, from her cabin in the Big Woods to her first house with Almanzo. My dog Scotch and I spent the majority of my childhood playing in and around that Laura House, as it quickly became known.

The house was situated at one end of a grassy pasture, near my dad's barn, and it made perfect sense for me to play Laura there. Wearing an old dress, apron, and a bonnet my dad got for me, I filled up old feed bags full of pine straw to make a mattress for the hard wooden bed made from discarded pallets. I put an old table made from an oak tree in one corner. On the mantle, a clock that didn't work, a few candles in metal candleholders, a tin plate, and a cup. (Somewhere, I don't know where, is a video of 11-year old me giving a tour of my fully-furnished Laura house to a lady from church. There's a video I would love to find!)

I can't count the happy times I had out there, dressed up like it was 1870 and running around with my dog. But eventually, I grew up too, and by the time I graduated from high school, my Laura house was a hold-all for curing hams, sweet feed, or hay for the farm.

So what does my playhouse have to do with my life as a 33-year old living in the city? Because for the first time since I was 13, I feel like I have found my real-life, life-sized Laura House. Not counting college dorm rooms, I've lived in nine different places since I was 18: houses, apartments, townhomes. In every one, I tried my hardest to make it feel like home, and I think, for the most part, I succeeded. But in every place, something was missing. It just didn't feel completely right to me. It was either too new, or too antiseptic, or too crowded, or just too wrong.

Until now!

My new house in Durham--the one whose keys we received on April 30 and the one we've been moving into piece by piece for the past two weeks--is exactly what I've been looking for. It's kind of old and uneven, it has electrical and plumbing problems, and the outbuildings are almost falling apart, but it has the warmth and the character I've been looking for since I started living on my own.

At this place, I've got a huge raised bed garden that Kyle worked tirelessly on (thank you!), filled with newly-planted seedlings; a back yard with a mulberry tree whose berries I've already made a cobbler from; a clothesline (a CLOTHESLINE!!!!); and a front porch for my wicker chairs. In this house, the windows are open, the pots and pans hang from the ceiling, and the china cabinet is full of stacked dishes. It's my Laura house, just bigger than one room.

And the best part? I won't have to sleep on a mattress made of pine straw!