Lingering in Doorways

I am writing this from my bedroom on the first floor of the house on B., north-west corner, obstructed garden views. The one to the left of the guest powder room, directly across the living room piano. My door is yellow, guarded by the twin bronze clowns and bowls of fake potpourri. Above the doorframe are graduation photos. On the welcome mat, usually, is a prim black cat.

Upon entry one you will notice that the room is quite airy, with a wide open space to dance in. You will be greeted by a bed, a sofa, and two windows, through which fall slivers of afternoon light. I’ve got two mirrors and a set of mismatched chairs (one a quilted wingback, the other stiff dark wood); a set closets, dressers, and a seven-foot bookcase, recently vacated (or never occupied). There’s also the tiny bathroom with a window at the very top, entered only through that slim door on your left.

In the mornings it’s on one of those chairs I sit, getting ready to go nowhere — a few minutes of mirror scrutiny and Faye Webster. Or maybe I’m on the sofa, a rosy low-slung cabriole, where I hide in the semi-dark until daylight finally dims. Apart from my bed, this sofa is the preferred seat for book-reading activity; on a good day I get a book and a drink and it feels almost like peace. And at four-thirty, if the angle is right, the room fills with liquid gold. It reaches the sofa, the book, where it’s rich and dense, like maple syrup on paper.

But enough about the light. My life is not a charmed one. Here, for instance, is the bed I can rot in, quite literally, for days on end. It’s never made. Nothing in my room is ever made. And one side is always pure clutter: trinkets, clothes, plates I can’t be bothered to clean up. The bed is an old friend, from my childhood room — one of the only things I recognize as mine. I’ve been sleeping in it for all of high school, and it carries battle-scars left over from that time. Glue-gun residue from string lights on the headboard, scratches on the post where we tried to pop a beer bottle open. An initial or two scratched in pen then carelessly scraped over. It’s a familiar comfort, a welcome one, even when used to settle into old, destructive patterns. Glass altar used as desk. Makeup box and makeup tray, skincare pouch next to them. A shelf on the wall, with framed pictures, two of us siblings. They were taken eight years ago, in Korea, by a touristy photo booth with an oil painting filter, and we’re both kids in them, smiles wide. There are paintings, too, full-sized and grand: an English cottage landscape and a still-life of roses. They’re lush and and gorgeous and don’t deserve to be here, kept like treasures and seen by no one but me. 

This room is mine, but it isn’t really. I’m borrowing it for the time being. Everything in it — from the plaid curtains to the cotton lamps — is my grandma’s, bought years ago and repurposed after the renovations. I like this space, but it’s missing the character built from years of residence. These walls are unblemished compared to my old mint-green ones, the paint unchipped from lights and boards and posters. The floors have no skid marks from roller skates, or swell in certain places because of water damage. I still mourn that room, the personality it’s curated, the memories that cling to it like old cooking smells. And it hurts to think of it existing the way it does now, walls torn and painted over, sitting stripped and lonely and abandoned.

But as transient as my new room feels, it’s really not so terrible. I like the plants outside my window and the way it dapples the light. I like how big it is, how I have room to breathe, how I have a bathroom that’s just for me. I like how there are empty spaces, and that I get to fill them, that it’s a gradual process that I get to look forward to. This room doesn’t feel like my room yet, but we have plenty of getting-to-know time ahead of us. And maybe some day I can finally claim it, let it know me well enough to make it my own.

A room that lets the light in, to read and to sleep in, with space to move and dance and live. A room for the summer, and the school year, and whatever else comes next. Romanticize a quiet life, there’s no place like my room — when you romanticize a quiet life, there’s no place like home.