04.30.23
My mom painted my room yellow.
My parents, now empty-nesters, have plenty of space in their house. There hasn’t been any need to convert my brother and I’s former rooms into anything else. But my mom needed to repaint after they ripped out part of the wall to replace insulation that had fallen out at least a decade earlier (I was very used to a cold room — a large piece of insulation missing in the wall right next to my bed meant that sleeping in there felt like sleeping in a garage). She opted for a nice, soft yellow, though she redid the short entryway the same light gray as the hallway, because when she did the entry with the same yellow, its bright overhead light made it look “like SpongeBob,” so she painted back over it.
She didn’t want to put all of my books and high school relics back if I didn’t want them, and asked me to go through my things. She made it very clear that I didn’t have to get rid of everything, but I should try and get down to one tall bookshelf instead of two, and decide what posters will be trashed and which ones I’d prefer to frame and keep.
Until this weekend, my room at my parents’ house has felt like a time capsule, essentially frozen in 2014. Posters for the Arctic Monkeys AM album and (500) Days of Summer adorned the walls, photos from high school graduations sit in frames. There is a pewter statue of Dobby from Harry Potter, because my grandmother was huge into Harry Potter before she died (she missed JK Rowling’s descent into TERFdom, and thank goodness she did, because she would have hated that). Dobby was her favorite, so every grandchild on that side had a Dobby from her, one of those collectibles you could order from inserts that came in the movie DVDs. There are character shoes in my closet from a storied history in high school community musical theater. There is a Muppet snow globe, because of course there is.
I lovingly throw away personal gifts, crafts and photos from friends who were at the time very close to me and have now graciously drifted away. I toss the MMA of the metal letters that once plastered my name across the wall, where I would wedge ticket stubs and photos and postcards. I set the E on the top shelf of my remaining bookcase. I remove a large bin-ful of books that I don’t expect to return to (The Handmaid’s Tale, Mindy Kaling’s second book, some children’s books I was holding onto for some arbitrary reason) and ones I never plan to get to (I have accepted that I will never read The Goldfinch, sorry).
My mom says that she wants my room to feel like a nice sanctuary that I can come to, and not a chaotic mess of things you forgot you had from childhood. She hangs one of her paintings on the wall where a collection of posters once lived. I opt to keep my In the Heights and Hair posters, which we will frame and hang in the alcove. I am nearly finished cleaning everything out, and achieving that nice sanctuary status. I just have some clothes to donate, and an M&M bag (?) filled with change (???) that I need to bring to a CoinStar machine. I will leave the cleanout unburdened by a messy, forgotten bedroom, and forty-or-so dollars richer.
