Childhood Bedroom

My childhood bedroom was massive. My first apartment as a married couple was roughly the same size as this room. The elongated dimensions were wide enough to house a queen-sized bed with ample space on either side, long enough to fit in a spare twin bed for guests. Its two separate closets meant my parents stored additional household goods in my room beyond my own clothes. The room’s corners contained two dressers, each five drawers high, flanked by musky-smelling bookshelves just as tall and crammed full of books. I lined the tops of the bookshelves and dressers alike with childhood stuffed animals. 

Beneath the window was an old children’s play table, raised to a height more conducive to a high-school student and accompanied by a wooden chair with a faded, mustard-yellow cover. I planned to study at this converted desk when I acquired it, but always completed my homework at the downstairs kitchen table instead. I tacked an array of posters of travel posters to places such as Seattle, Switzerland, England onto the pale-pink walls with multi-colored push pens. 

I felt safe in my bedroom. It was my private retreat, an enormous provision of space and seclusion. Even with the amount of furniture positioned within its walls, there was still ample space in the middle of the floor to stretch out my whole body. I felt exposed in my bedroom. There were no curtains over the wide-open windows, and I could not change into pajamas at night in my bedroom with any modicum of privacy. 

What does it mean when your formative years are spent in a room so massive, so full of possessions? For me, it meant I did not need as much space when I was grown. I learned that more room was not a guarantee of more happiness. Every master bedroom I have shared as an adult has been smaller. I learned having this much room to myself can be lonely. I did my homework in communal areas, piled on other friends’ beds in their rooms, read on the living room couch. There is joy in a private retreat. But there is joy in being part of a larger community, and that is what my bedroom taught me.