Fine. I’ll casually amble to my old bedroom. It’s all cool and shit.
So, I pour another drink and force my legs to move, and I enter the giant foyer that leads into the house. I glance to my right through an open door to a truly ugly bathroom and laundry area with rather grotesque yellow tiles that remind me of dying sunflowers. Or, well, urine. One shouldn’t decorate any bathroom in urine yellow. I back out and shut that door and walk into the main room.
There’s no true dining area here, only a long table thrown between the staircase on my left and the living room on my right. This is open-concept design at its strangest, and while my mother surely sees this as another realty flaw, I kind of dig it.
The living room is large with a high ceiling that is stupendous and a fireplace that is sizable but framed by hideous red brick that traces up to the ceiling. Truthfully, I can see that this room is maybe boring. And outdated. And so, so depressing with dark wood walls and the dark floor and nearly no light.
And, oh God, I want to cry. My childhood is in every nook of this space. Family Monopoly nights on the table, my dad teaching me how to start a fire in the fireplace…
I look away.
The curved staircase to the second floor is on my left, and I stumble up the stairs until I nearly fall into the hallway, grabbing on to a doorknob to stop myself. The closet is full of linens, I know. I open it and smile.
Ohmigod.
There are stacks of comforters, blankets, and quilts. And I remember.
Bwankies wiff wibbons what work.
Blankets with ribbons that worked.
When I was a little kid, I had a thing about blankets.Bwankies.Requirements, I remember. With wide ribbon edges that, when rubbed between my fingers, made arightsound or feel. That somehowworkedfor my childhood self.
My mother made sure that I always had what I liked, and she’d sit beside my bed while I rubbed a blanket’s silky border between my fingers, assessing how it felt.
“Does itwork?” she’d ask.
I cannot slam that closet door hard enough.
Tentatively, I go to my old room. The one that I haven’t seen since I was eleven years old.
Same furniture, same layout. Someone emptied my closet and drawers, thankfully, but there are still items from my past. A teddy bear, a framed picture of my family that I can’t look at, tattered posters on the walls. While it’s tempting to collapse into my bed and drown, I don’t.
Farther down the hall, my sister, Erica’s, room doesn’t shake me—at first. But then I remember giggling together here. Her dressing me up in her clothes. Me idolizing my older sister. We used to be close. We used to love each other.
I retrace my steps to the landing by the stairs. The bathroom has a claw-foot tub that I have always loved. It’s so utterly white in here. White tiles, white vanity, white walls. It’s astoundingly nostalgic and charming in its vintage design. Not so sure that I could demolish any of this.
I have to finish my necessary tour.
Across from the closet full of blankets and my old bedroom is my parents’ bedroom. It’s then that I let my heart break. Their room, so small but so full of love. Wood planks line the walls and sharp-angled ceiling. It feels nearly impossible to stand up in here, but I laugh, remembering how both my parents would navigate the room with giggles and ease. The hand-painted light-green dressers, soft white rug, the cozy corner chair, the hand-painted tiles around the small fireplace. I used to crawl into bed with my mom and dad, fall between them and the puffy duvet that’s still here now, and be enveloped in their love. Waking up to curl up in the small arched window with a view of the front lawn, the light subtle and perfect, was everything.
After I crush what’s left of my drink, I stumble into their bed. And then I sob. Because it doesn’t smell like them at all. It doesn’t smell like my childhood. But of course, it shouldn’t. That would be insane.
It smells like freshly laundered sheets.
Someone—orsomeones—has cleaned this house. And my dad’s car. And the kitchen. And probably more than I’ve noticed.
I tear off my pants and shirt and snuggle a pillow.
Maybe I’m not alone here.
