I have this great room for writing. And thinking. And daydreaming. It’s on the second floor of our house and has two large windows with views of the trees and hill behind our house as well as the mountains to the northeast of us. Sometimes the views are stunning when we have heavy storms that blanket our mountains with snow. Some days I can sit up in my room and watch dark brooding thunderclouds roll by one after the other. And one day the sun came out while it was still raining and a glorious rainbow filled up half of my window. I have to admit it’s hard to get any work done when a rainbow is staring you in the face.
This room has not always been mine. For more than twenty years it was the personal domain of our daughter Michaela. She took possession of the room when I moved here in 1976 when she was only a year old. Right away we painted the room a bright sunny yellow that complimented her white crib (soon replaced by a bed) and the cute white furniture I bought from Sears. When she was older, we let her pick a new color scheme and she chose a soft sky blue. By the time she moved out to go to graduate school, however, it was nearly impossible to tell what the color of her room was because almost every available inch was now covered with pictures, sayings, posters and photos—even the ceiling! I don’t recall ever seeing a single poster of a rock group or celebrity, however. No, Michaela’s room expressed her concerns for the environment, indigenous peoples and life on the planet.
It was a daunting task for her to go through all her belongings in this room before she moved to Colorado—and no small task to remove all those posters and photos. In fact, there was still plenty of stuff left behind when she moved out. When she came home that first Christmas, she spent a few days sorting and packing more stuff that I later mailed to her. And yet, even with all that, there were still boxes that she had left behind—mementos, school awards, things she just couldn’t decide about. Things she thought she might want later but didn’t want to schlep around with her now. That was why for another year her old room became a sort of storage room for things of our own that we didn’t know what to do with. We kept saying we had to get to cleaning the room and redecorating it, but no one really wanted to take the first step. Maybe part of me kept hoping she would actually return and retake possession of the room but I think mostly I just didn’t want to exert the necessary energy. Finally, in the fall of the next year I went through the rest of her stuff (and all the junk we’d added) and got everything out of there. Then Jim began the really daunting task of prepping those poor abused walls. We re-painted the ceiling, added a central light and fan and then took several weeks going over color schemes. Finally, I decided and Jim went about transforming the room.
I think of Michaela every day I am in this room. All the years of her growing-up that she spent in here. The good times, the sad times, the sound of her laughter echoing off these walls, the tears that were shed in here. The secrets that she kept locked up in little private places. This room helped shape her life, helped direct her toward the future she is now living. Watching the birds in the tree tops, seeing the clouds rolling by, it is no wonder she cherishes the environment. It is no wonder she is a poet.
There is poetry here in this room and now I get to read it.
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