Long before I owned a big velvet couch, I owned an itty-bitty one. Years before I could sweep my front porch with a broom, I could dust it off with a fingertip. And decades before my dining room sparkled under a ponderous chandelier, it glowed under a pee-wee one, about two inches long.

I had a dollhouse. A dazzling, one-of-a-kind dollhouse that my father built for me. A blue two-story Victorian with an Astroturf lawn, white popsicle-stick fence, and working lights — and switches — in every room.

My dad's a woodcarver, and quite a craftsman. The way he remembers it, I approached him one day with this oh-so-casual remark: "Grandma said you could make me a dollhouse. You couldn't do that, could you?"