the attic

I started out my helpfulness the day after we arrived by diving into the attic and sorting with relish. My parents' house is an old one, built around 1910, if I remember correctly (you can see one pic of it here.) It has a downstairs and an upstairs, plus a full basement, complete with coal bin, and a walk-up attic--from one of the front bedrooms you open what looks like a second closet door, and see the staircase going up. 

I love the attic.  I have ever since I was a kid here.  Some time after we first moved into this house (so, sometime after my second grade), my dad thought my two sisters and I might like to play up there, so he placed a piece of carpet under the west gable (if you look at that linked photo, you can barely see the east gable and window there at the top under the eaves--the other side is just the same from the outside), and arranged a little area for us.  Even as children we had to duck our heads while playing up there; only in the very center peak of the attic is it high enough for a tall adult to walk without fear, and most of the attic you have to watch your head or stoop or even crouch.

No matter.  It is a fantastic space.  Possibly my favorite place in the whole house.  Wood floor blackened with age, exposed red bricks of the chimney in the middle, the two wood-framed gable windows on either end letting in morning or evening light and occassional welcome breezes.  Just the right amount of neat storage and jumbled treasure, new trunks of off-season clothing and old trunks of old formals and costumes.  Hand-knitted baby sweaters and little white leather shoes kept simply by sentiment. A yellow and green and gold sequined Mardi Gras fish costume.  Prom dresses from the 1950's and 60's.  An antique wooden wardrobe against the chimney, with a real stuffed king cobra coiled on top, his hood flared and fangs bared--and an apologetic dressing of silver duct tape around his middle from where he had suffered too much handling by us little girls. 

Of course it was freezing up there in the winter; my memories of the attic during the cold months are pretty much limited to quick excursions up to bring down Christmas decorations or to find boxes for wrapping presents.  And in the summer it could be oppressively hot, the air so thick and almost heavy in my lungs, and even breezes could not penetrate the dull, baking air and were only felt if I pressed my sticky face against the aged window screen for a moment of relief.

But still, even the heat felt like adventure, and comforting at the same time, and I frequently went up to the attic in all but the most unbearable heat.  I remember sitting in that West gable, playing house with the antique doll bed and quilt and a little box I had with three drawers and blue flowers painted on the sides.  I remember, too, sitting in the attic and playing our family Simon game. Why in the attic? I'm not sure, except that my parents must have stored some games in the attic during the years that my dad was finishing the basement.  But that game was all the more mesmerizing in the semi-dark attic. 

For a time in my later years--late middle school or high school--there was a mattress on the floor over near the West end, and I remember escaping up into the attic to read, for hours, lying there on that bare blue and white ticking-striped mattress in the dim, hot quiet.  But it is that west gable for which I have the most affection.  I don't think my sisters played up there as much as I did, so I remember it feeling like more my space than a family space.  Maybe that was important to me growing up as the middle of three sisters, and always sharing a toom with my older sister--I don't remember desiring my own space as much as just naturally going and seeking it out. 

I am  having sudden waves of nostalgia wash over me as I type this, along with sudden glimmers of mental images--of certain toys or items that we had in that little play area. . . but the pictures in my mind are not complete, so I am having a hard time remembering exactly what the items looked like. . . .  I can recall better the things that ended up in the attic in my teenage years, or after college--models built by my grandfather, boxes of memorabelia like our yearbooks and old, dried corsages and artwork and awards.  This time, going up in the attic, it was even farther removed from the space of my childhood, as my parents have had garage sales from time to time, and things I remember could not be found this time--they must have been released into the world years and years ago, while I was off busy with my own family.

But the sense of it--the sound of my feet on the steps leading up the attic stairs, the still heaviness, the smell of old tar and old wood, the dim light from the single bulb leaving the eaves in shadow--is exactly the same. 

And I am so glad I got to explore and remember and escape in it one last time.