As suggested in today’s task on the Writing 101 Course we are supposed to write about finding something.

What I will describe here as a find has to do with the time last spring where I was recovering after leaving my job.

In my youth, I had a hairdresser Erik that I was very fond of. He didn’t say too much, but he said the right things, and he could find a haircut that suited me. I felt very treasured in his presence as he was able to listen and put questions – though not too many. I think I can connect with people when I have them in a dialogue.

He was a sole holder of his hairdressing saloon in an old quarter of Copenhagen in St. Petri’s Lane. (My grandmother Asta’s mother’s father had immigrated to Denmark 150 years ago, and his family was involved in that church as it was a German church and he came from Königsberg in East Prussia.)

As I came here in the seventies and the eighties I noticed a growing amount of old dolls and a doll’s house on the old mantelpiece. He had an interest in collecting these things, but he didn’t mention too much about it. I thought it was exceptional that he, a young man, was a doll collector. When I got married the first time, he travelled to the home of my childhood and did my hair and put the veil on – a very personal thing to do.

One year, visiting Copenhagen, while I still lived in Sweden I discovered to my great distress that the shop was closed leaving no sign on it about where Erik could be found. Often I would wonder –  was he dead? Does he have a shop somewhere else? It left a big void in me, and the thoughts about it haunted me.

Since then twenty years have gone by and having retired I have taken up the interest of collecting old dolls and doll’s prams or baby carriages. Somehow these things are very precious to me and represent the dreams of my childhood where I had an outspoken longing for baby dolls.

“Olga’s lyst or delight” at The Danish National Museum in Brede

Last April I wanted to see Toy Museum in Copenhagen called Olga’s Lyst. It was not easy to get in contact with the owner. At last, the phone was answered, and the voice told me that it was not open the day I was in Copenhagen. A little later the same voice asked me:

“When can you come”? I said at three o’clock!

What a shock it was for me to realise that the owner of this Toy Museum was the lost hairdresser Erik. He had spotted me talking on the phone and had decided to open that day.

Erik and my reunion at his museum

That meeting healed some of the wounds I had got leaving my job as a health visitor and after he had shown me everything he found some beautiful old things from the time of my childhood that he would sell to me. I have been there once more and how lovely it is to have found this former hairdresser again.

some of his dolls at the muesum

Kaiser baby doll from about 1912 and a “Dream Baby” A. Marseille

A doll I bought from Erik