The garage gets a new look ~ August 13, 1992

David Heiller

The top floor of our garage has taken on a new appearance lately. My tool bench now has a shade-less lamp and the bottom part of a broken food processor on it. My work table is covered with an old bed sheet. On top of it is a silk flower arrangement, a rusty tea kettle, and three wooden bowls. Two old kitchen chairs are pulled up next to it, along with a 10-gallon milk can turned upside down with two toy tea cups on it.

Two old hats are sitting on a cooler. Two old blankets have been taken from a box and spread out on the floor. An old bathroom sink has been dragged to the middle of the room.

Malika and a "yeah-but" look.

All this is the work of a seven-year-old girl who has discovered a new playhouse. She led me up to it by the hand one day recently, so proudly that I had to check my anger like another old hat at the door.

MY garage, with boxes so old I don’t know what’s in them, with broken chairs that never got mended, with old hats that don’t work anymore, with blankets to cover the tomatoes, with electric motors and tackle boxes and jars of nails screwed into the rafters, MY garage has been invaded.

Sure, it is full of junk and clutter, like an old attic. But there was method to the madness. About once a year I look through things, re-stack boxes, sort the nails that have been thrown on the tool bench, clear a space on the floor. I didn’t need Mollie to rearrange things for me—that was my first peevish thought.

I suppose there was something deeper too. You could argue that a garage is a sacred place for a man, his “space”, a refuge even if it’s stiflingly hot in the summer and 40-below in the winter, an orderly place that only he controls, until his kids get hold of it.

But my scowls turned into wistful smiles in short time. Who can’t remember the clubhouses they had as kids? I had some beauties. And who didn^’t want to have a playhouse as a kid? I always used to envy those lucky kids who had a real playhouse, a separate little building where they could hang out and play pretend games. That’s what Malika had proudly made on her own.

It’s good to have those pretend things, to create places of your own, to be able to play by yourself, using your imagination and a few old relics instead of expensive store-bought toys. which is what Mollie was doing.

Still, to protect my wounded pride, I asked Malika sternly about why she needed that room in the garage, when she had her own bedroom, equipped with all the luxuries of a modern girl.

Not ALL, she informed me in her best “yeah-but” response. “Yeah, but I don’t have a kitchen in there, and a fridge, so how could I play house in there without a kitchen or fridge or a sink? I like the garage better,” she said.

I told her that I hadn’t seen a fridge. “Uh huh, a pretend one. The blue cooler is the fridge.” She had it standing on end, just like a real fridge. How could I have missed it?

That little window up there, that is where the 
Garage Transformation took place.

Where’s the kitchen, I asked. “In that little corner by the tent stuff, that’s the kitchen, by the table. And my bed is in that little corner. But I don’t have a living room. Anyway, I do eat up there, Dad. Dad, can we eat up there sometime? I have bowls.”

It’s too hot there, I answered lamely. “Well, take all your clothes off, except your underwear,” she answered in a voice that said I had the silliest excuse ever dreamed up by a weak-minded father on a spur of the moment.

So that’s where we sit. My upstairs of the garage—my clubhouse!—is gone, transformed into something new and exciting. Look for me there: I’ll be sitting in my underwear eating at Mollie’s kitchen table.