What I Remember About My Childhood Bedroom

1,057 words

8 minute read

I've been loving Chanel and Tiffany Miller's podcast, Childhood with Chanel and Tiffany, since its premiere last fall.  One of the things I love most about it are the questions asked, meant to get listeners thinking about moments in their own childhoods.  One of their earliest questions was: "What do you remember about your childhood bedroom?"

As a trauma survivor, many of my memories of childhood are negative, but this question created space for me to begin to remember glimmers of safety.  In the coming weeks, I'll answer other questions prompted by this podcast, but I wanted to begin with his one.

***

I'm one of those people who is in awe when I see your childhood bedroom, kept exactly the same, like a little time capsule.  Someplace you can return to when you need safety or solace.  Your collection of stuffed animals from babyhood at the ready.

My childhood bedroom (singular) did not exist.  Because I had bedroom(s).  Approximately ten different ones.  This is because I moved eleven times and attended seven different schools by the time I was 10 years old.  (Changed schools again for middle and high school.)

Keeping the same bedroom all four years of high school was a revelation, because it was - to date - the longest we'd been able to keep the same space for ourselves.  

But that's not the childhood bedroom I'm going to share about today.  The one I'm going to share about was one we had for maybe the shortest period of time ever.

It also felt the safest.

***

[Tara, left, and Tonia, right.  In "our room" at our great grandparents house.]

It was a guest room, really.

But when Tara and I were six years old, it was ours.

We lived there for four months.  (Not just in the room, but in the house.)  And the safety and love we felt and found there was unparalleled.

It had a sliding wooden door, which I loved.  A four-poster bed.  Wood paneling on all the walls.  Sliding closet doors that kept coloring books, bristle blocks, Skip-Bo cards and the card shuffler, and Barbie dolls from the 1960's in one half.  In the other half, there were winter jackets.  There was Grandpa's violin.  (His accordion was kept somewhere, too.  It was a special night when he got it out and played it for us.)

All along a high shelf were dated boxes that held Grandpa's filmstrips that he'd taken through the years.  In one corner of the room there hung a small sign that read: Grandfathers are made for loving and for fixing things!  On another section of wall were some inordinately giant wooden scissors.

The main draw in the room (aside from the toys, and the space to play) was the organ, which had numbered keys, and where I taught myself to play one of the songs from our Wee Sing Bible Songs cassette tape with one finger.  Tara was more adept, and learned to play songs like Beautiful Dreamer, by reading the song books.  (Sometimes, our day was equally made, if Grandma came in and decided to play us a song or two, while she sang:

Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.

I'm half cr*zy all for the love of you.

It won't be a stylish marriage,

I can't afford a carriage.

But you'll look sweet,

Upon the seat,

Of a bicycle built for two.

The carpet was a combination of red, orange and brown, kind of shaggy.  The bed had some kind of heavy blanket.  The sheets (often white and pastel striped) smelled like Downy detergent.  The bed was undeniably cozy and there was a night light mounted on the wall by our heads.

***

Each night, after a few rounds of Skip-Bo (always, Tara and I against Grandma and Grandpa) and a snack (a slice of turkey salami from the local meat market and a glass of milk was a favorite of mine...) we'd head to bed.

We loved it when Grandpa would toss us into bed, swinging us back and forth slightly a few times before he would gently place us into bed.  We'd crawl down under the covers.  Grandma would be there to talk to us each night.  Sometimes answering our questions about where the bump on her forehead came from (a car accident when she was five.)  Sometimes, the fielded more futuristic concerns: "Do people have to go to college?"

Always, she finished by saying The Lord's Prayer with us.

She gave us hugs and kisses.

And she always said, "I love you, my little poopsies," which always made us laugh - for obvious reasons.  I've only just found out in writing this post that poopsie is a small child and/or a sweetheart.  It's a term of affection or endearment used in the 1930's.

Grandpa would come and check on us, using his flashlight to come all the way across the house.  We could go to their bed if we were sick.  Tara did, in fact.

I woke up later, terrified that she had vanished, sobbing, "My sissy's gone!"

I felt more devastated than I ever had.  We had gone to sleep together in the same bed.  And just like that, the bed was empty, the sheets cold.  It was dark in the house.  The chairs used as a railing blocked me safely into bed, but my walker was on the other side of the chairs.

I couldn't get to it.

I was trapped, and I was alone.

But Grandpa heard me crying.

He came and got me.

He carried me all the way to his and Grandma's room, telling me softly, "Your sissy's right here.  See?"

Our great grandparents were in their 70's. They had raised their own kids.  And then their kids had kids.  And their kids had kids.

But they still raised us and loved us as their own.  I never once got the feeling that they were stuck with us, or burdened by us.  They wanted us.  And we wanted them.

We were fond of each other.

"You're called great grandparents because you're great, right?" I'd ask in the morning at breakfast - often a poached "eggy" and mint tea with sugar.

And they would laugh and laugh.

It's that sound - and that bedroom - that epitomized safety to me.

***

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