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Did you ever have a room that you loved so much you just never wanted to leave?
For me it was the bedroom I called home when I was eleven or twelve years old... (gosh how I loved that room). I remember so vividly, how warm and wonderful it felt, when I would cross the threshold to the little 10x10 space that was my comfort and my safe haven... where, when life beyond that space became too crazy for any young girl to face, I could sit on the floor of the tiny closet surrounded by my school uniforms and much loved mary janes, and with composition pads and colored pencils I could weave these wonderful little tales of another life... one where the dragon had already been slain.
I remember how every once in a while I would reach up and grasp that beautiful glass door knob, the one that made the rainbow prisms along the wall... and open the door, slowly, just a crack, to see if per chance, the little closet had magically turned into a pumpkin and whisked me off to a land far away...
I never was in another land, but that was okay. I would take comfort in the warmth of the afternoon sunlight, as it came streaming in and wrapped itself like a blanket around me... and comfort in the tiny little lilacs that danced upon the creamy wallpaper too.
I would smile that secretly, I had taken a pencil or two, and almost like connecting the dots, had turned all of those delicate lilacs behind the headboard of my bed, into faces and places where only I could go. It mattered not the severity of what I would face when all of this was eventually discovered... for now I was happy just to sit on the floor of that cool dark closet and mindlessly peel the flowered paper where the seams had grown yellowed and the glue had pulled itself away from the wall.
I would spend countless hours in that little closet in the room that I loved so much. I would hide there most days until the sky turned to ink. And as night fell and reality crept back in, it was the quiet sounds of Connie Francis singing from the small blue suitcase record player in the corner, that would lull me to sleep and tell me over and over again, that everything would one day be alright.
Now, all these many years later, I have a room that makes me feel exactly the same way. A room where I walk across the threshold and immediately the soft warm glow of that very same sunlight wraps itself around me and embraces me as deeply as that blanket from the past.
I cannot quite identify why any of this is. I have lived in tiny apartments and one room flats. In houses rented and houses owned. Have traveled from one coast to the other and back again... again and again. But it was not until moving here that a room has whispered that the Dragon is old and weary now, and that this here is a place all my very own that tells me each and every day how deeply I am loved.
A room where I awaken and every now and again, as the curtains dance in harmony with the cardinals and the chickadees, I can almost hear the far off strains of Connie Francis like a hazy memory reminding me that everything really is alright.
I smile, and hug myself as I think about that room... the one with the beloved closet. You see, the closet has been replaced with a huge cherry wood table. One that I sit at and run my hand over again and again as I write and remember.
I love the tiny treasures the table does hold... bottles and jars full of feathers and heart shaped rocks, little speckled quail eggs and bleached white bones from little animals I cannot even identify... all these things that came and spoke to my childlike heart.
My porcelain faced Raggedy Ann that I hold so dear...she still has a heart that says 'I love you' hidden beneath her frock. Paintbrushes and Pentels too, have come to replace those colored pencils of old... but I lovingly keep a box of them tucked away still, to never forget from where it is I have come, you see, I love this room so full of the beautiful things that makes my heart sing.
The walls adorned with art that I love, both mine and others that I deeply admire... and even though the years have passed and I no longer use pencils to connect the dots on the wallpaper... not a day goes by when I do not stand and look at the tiny floral patterns and with my finger trace those faraway faces and places of old...
How incredible it is that, no matter the troubles of the day, or the busyness and bustle in the rest of the house, all I need do is step across the threshold of this room I love so much, the room where my heart does dwell... and I am instantly whisked away to a sacred place, that proclaims and confirms again and again, that the pumpkin really did whisk me away after all... gosh, how I love this room. xoxo
