Tuesday Memory Challenge – Your childhood bedroom
Growing up I lived in several places. There was my grandparent’s house, a couple of times.. There was the little house on Almond Avenue my mom rented for just the two of us, for a few years on our own. It was just around the corner from my grandmother’s so we were close if she needed us but far enough away for some independence. I don’t remember much about it except that it was where I was first afraid to go to sleep at night which led to me telling myself stories in my head which led, eventually, to writing.
For another short while, in my teen years, my mom rented an apartment which was right on the edge of two school districts and for some reason (okay, there was a boy involved) I convinced her to let me switch high schools for a year. I wish she had said no. After a year I went back to Mt. Diablo and I never found my niche in high school after that.
In the apartment my bedroom usually looked something like this:
The carpet is shag, of course. The bedspread was a purple fur. My mother hated it but she let me have it. There was a record player for yes, records. The globe lit up. There’s a bottle of perfume on my dresser which was the first perfume (maybe the only) ever given to me by a boy. My earrings were hanging from a piece of burlap. I made that earring holder myself. I made most of the earrings too. My mom had finally given up on telling me I couldn’t wear dangles. The hairpiece was for skating competitions and the clothes on the bed were skating outfits.
I can see an e.e. cummings book on the bottom shelf and Rod McKuen’s Listen to the Warm (the small orange book) on the floor. On the far right there’s a giant Troll doll and, if you look carefully, there’s a purple wax castle candle that a boy made for me. (Not the one that gave me the perfume but the only football player I ever dated.) The bulletin board is filled with quotes and pieces of poetry and probably notes from a boy. (Not the boy who gave me the perfume – he didn’t do notes. And not the boy who made me the candle – he barely talked, let alone wrote notes.)
This is a room where I spent a lot of time alone. A lot of time crying over the aforementioned boys and many others. This was the room I ran to when Matt Blake made a fool of me at the Junior Prom. This was the room I hid in when someone TPed the front door of the apartment (and not in a nice way) and no one ever owned up to it. This is the room where I wrote a lot of poetry. This is the room where I stood between being a child and a young woman.
But it is not the bedroom I remember most and best of all.
My favorite bedroom growing up was when we were back at my grandmother’s house and I had finally grown old enough to have the only bedroom upstairs. It was almost the attic, but not quite. I think they called it a story and a half. You went up the very steep stairs and there was a long room that we used for storage and a finished bedroom. Before the bedroom, off to each side, was the actual attic where we stored the Christmas decorations.
The wide open space before the bedroom was my playroom. I could be as messy as I wanted to and it didn’t matter because no one ever really came upstairs. I was able to use it as a playroom for a long time before I was old enough to actually move upstairs for sleeping. I did countless craft projects up there, string art and those purses where you glued on fake stones. I drew, poorly but I drew. Did puzzles and spent a lot of time making things up because most of the time I was up there alone.
I loved having my friends over for tea parties. (Debbie, Leanne, me and Linda)
If you look close at the top of the picture you’ll see that if Leanne had moved back, her head would have hit the roof. And you can see one of the little doors to the actual attic. Chatty Cathy is hanging out in the high chair and Little Kiddles are on the floor. I only have to look at this picture to remember so many things about being ten years old.
I can remember when my uncle took my Chatty Cathy doll with him on a trip and I never got her back. I can remember getting the big doll that is standing next to me when I was in the hospital to get my adnoids out. I look at Debbie and i remember the Puff the Magic Dragon episode. I see Leanne and I remember playing Batman and Robin. And Linda, Linda used to live next door to me, for a little while. Her parents owned The Sun and Moon, the local Chinese restaurant, and when I was sick they would bring me my favorites, fried won tons and fried prawns. My mother always said it would make me throw up but it always made me feel better.
I loved that upstairs bedroom. There were two windows, one at each of the long ends. If I opened the one in the storage area I could see and smell and almost touch one of the three orange trees that lined the driveway. If I opened the one in my bedroom I could look out into the Tuey’s backyard where Linda’s grandmother hung strange things on the clothesline, like the vegetables they grew in the garden to use in the restaurant.
There was no heater upstairs so winter was cold. The only heat I got was from one downstairs, one of those floor ones with metal grate. It was right at the bottom of the stairs and there were doors on all four sides of it. In the winter time my grandmother or my mother would get up, turn on the furnace and then close all the doors except the one to the upstairs so some of the heat would find its way to my room. In the winter time I would stand on the grate until I felt the heat through my slippers and I burned waffle marks in the bottom.
Your turn. What do you remember most about a bedroom from your childhood?
We used to tease my sister about the Chatty Cathy doll, since that–the Kathy part–was her name! 🙂
Okay, I’m loving these Tuesday posts. My childhood bedrooms–pretty much a history of who I was as a child…shy, but not liking to be alone, clinging to safe people.
In our first house, my older sister and I shared a room, while my younger sister had the 3rd bedroom–basically a den. My older sister was amazing–we had make-believe every night, at her direction. We had toy shops under our covers where we “built” stuffed animals. We sat at the ends of our bed and drove covered wagons, like Laura & Mary. We saw Rudolph’s nose out our window every Xmas eve.
Then she decided she was done sharing with me (too old? too tired of make-believe? Wanting her own space?) and convinced my little sister how much more space there was in the big room. They swapped. All my little sister wanted to do at night was read or go to sleep. No more make-believe. (I know, how silly that I, now a writer, couldn’t manage to handle that part of the night by myself, but there you go.)
When I was eight, my parents started building a new house, and–gasp–it had a bedroom for all of us. For everyone else, that was wonderful–heaven. Not me. We walked the foundations over & over, everyone else excited, me dreading the day we’d leave our already perfect (small, basic tract home) house and come to this silly, huge place that I had no desire for. We got to pick rooms, and I insisted on picking the room that was next to my parents, figuring that if I needed them at night, I had the shortest route. (Yes, I know, but I did finally grow up, years later!). Of course, I never used it, and I never liked that room, it was too sunny, too hot.
Eventually, my older sister and I swapped (hmm, I’m sensing a pattern about her here!), and I got the cool, shady room that became my cave. That room is where I truly remember doing all my reading, all my early writing–where I fought my dad tooth & nail about having to keep it clean, where I painted my furniture neon green, where all my escape and imaginings happened. I guess, by the time I was a teenager and really WANTED to be alone, I had found the right room.
Great post!
Oh you went deeper with your memory of your rooms. I like that!
Thanks for sharing.
How very cool that you have a photo of your bedroom!
I’ve had many, many bedrooms. From birth to the age of 21, I moved about 25 times. Strangely, I don’t know whether I have photos of any of those rooms!
Does one room stand out in your mind more than the others?
I’m wondering what your uncle did with that Chatty Cathy doll;)
And why he took it with him in the first place!
I had that same orange shag carpeting in my LR and DR growing up. Groovy.
And my favorite bedroom was my father’s in my grandmother’s house as well. It was tiny, fit two twin beds under each eave, with a small window in between. The beds were wonderfully lumpy and soft (would probably kill the back of any adult). When my father lived there, it was unheated (in Minnesota!!). Man, no wonder the guy always had bronchitus as a kid.
But it was wonderfully snuggly for me:)
LOL on my uncle. My mom said he was fascinated with it but it does sound a tad creepy. 🙂
Brrr…on unheated bedrooms in Minnesota!
What an amazing room you had. To me, it seems the height of luxury — for others I’m sure, not so much.
I had more bedrooms than I can count. Most of them, I shared with my sisters. The five of us slept head-to-toe, head-to-toe in a double bed (when we had one).
It wasn’t a big fancy place at all. And when I look at the other childhood pictures it was really run-down, especially after my grandfather died and there was no longer a man around the house.
But I didn’t know that then.
Since I was an only child I always slept alone – well surrounded by stuffed animals but alone.
cool pics, great memories!
BEDROOMS:
SCARY ROOM at Grandma’s. My Dad’s old room. Creepy clankin’ raditor that hissed like a giant snake.
PORCH ROOM was on the porch. Had to try to get to sleep before Gramp as he snored horribly! But it wasn’t a SCARY room.
UNCLE’s ROOM at Grandma’s. Another option, not so scary. And besides, I was just your typical depressed teen who wasn’t scared as much as bored and slept til one or two in the afternoon on Saturdays.
SCARY ROOM at “first” house. A street light that always backlit the creepy tree.
FIRST ROOM at “our house.” Shared with sister. Best when our beds were bunks. So many more adventures with that.
SECOND ROOM. We got moved down cellar. “Wall” between us was created by our bureaus. Not much of a wall. Eventually, folks realized my sister desreved more privacy.
LAST ROOM was not a room. Not a room with a door, that is. There was a door to Sis’ room (see Second Room). And a door to wash room. But my room was at the bottom of the stairs. Not much privacy. A counter like a bar created the “wall” between me and the rest of the room. My bed was behind it. On one side I could roll over and there was enough room to walk around bed, not much more. The other side faced the shelves of the bar/counter. My treasures: MAD magazines, portable stereo, records and other collectables lived there. My “private” world. Not many folks came around the bar (which had a swinging door) so, that was my privacy — as long as I was laying down.
It was OK. As a teen, I liked this “hole.” I felt like it was my “bed hole” like Lennon’s in HELP! When people came to visit, we had stools we could sit at the bar. I would doodle sometimes there.
But I didn’t spend much time there. And it worked out nice when I would come home “otherwise influenced.” I could say “I’m home!” and go downstairs and crash in my bed.
Chatty Cathy! I thought my longing for one of those ended some forty years ago.
But I guess not.
Thank you for the glimpse into your childhood world.