Nooks and Crannies

I'm finding it important to have spaces in my home where I can retreat. Sometimes locking the door on my bathroom but also nooks for reading, journaling, working, whatever revives my mojo. It's time to rethink.

I realize now, I desired my own bedroom as a child because I required alone time to recharge. Thankfully, my sister roommate didn't, and spent most of her alone time upstairs with Mom while I hung out with myself in music and words.

Question 9: your childhood bedroom?

I always shared a bedroom with my sister, one year and one day younger than me. First that I can remember, we had bunk beds. I claimed the top, which made it way easier to tie her hands and feet to the bottom of my top box spring one night because she always fell asleep so early, to find herself in a permanent v-sit. “Mooooooommm!!”

I remember our room decorated in browns and yellows with some Raggedy Ann and Andy reaching for a theme. We played dress up and house and held top secret private meetings in the closet for Eraser Club. I Heard It Through the Grapevine screeched on my Michael Jackson record player. Dolls and Barbies eventually took the back seat to ghetto blasters and posters of Kirk Cameron.

Next house was a small upstairs bedroom with a light bulb vanity built into the wall. By then, we had two beds taking up already limited floor space furthermore covered in dirty, wrinkly, hand-me-down clothes, with trails from bed to closet to door. I didn’t seem to give a shit about the bedroom where my mother once resided with her younger sister, also as young teens.

Then we moved to the farm, where sister and I took over the slanted ceiling main bedroom and painted it mauve, stuffing our clothes in the only closet in the century-old house. Spent most of my time in my bedroom to avoid my mom’s boyfriend and his list of chores and snide comments.

The only bedroom at my dad’s was his own with a waterbed we slept on while he took the couch. When he moved into the double wide, he kept the waterbed but added a bedroom where I crashed on college weekends.

Shared my first college dorm-room bedroom with three random gals from Sioux Falls, Iowa, and Los Angeles, second with an art major who's homemade bunk bed system welcomed me to kiss the ceiling good night. She and I moved to a newer dorm and hung a plastic shower curtain designed with sea life over the window to block light glaring on our Sunday coloring sessions.

Finally I had my own bedroom by the age of 21 with a box spring and mattress on the floor, incense burner on the cheap dresser. Bedroom after that, I filled with books and knickknacks. In grad school, my apartment was my bedroom, where I could rise from the foot of my bed and start frying eggs.

From there, I nannied in New Jersey and saw how the rich folks live, spending a summer in an attic bedroom complete with a large ornate bed frame, white sheets and down comforter, bench seat below the large octagon window looking upon the backyard pool and all the other backyard pools, connecting the dots to the beach.

One summer in New Jersey, my boyfriend and I slept on an inflatable mattress in a small apartment over an ice cream shop in a small beach town sandwiched between ocean and bay. I could see the tide shift while I took a shit.

I haven’t had my own bedroom ever since.