Goodbye to the Shrine of My Youth

Repainted but not forgotten.

My childhood bedroom has been repainted “greige.” Greige is a portmanteau of gray and beige, a color a child would never pick. My dad hopes this will make the room “more welcoming to people who aren’t you.” 

“What people?” I ask, but I haven’t lived there in over a decade. So whatever colors, whatever people, whatever they want goes. 

The summer I turned 11, I picked new colors for my bedroom walls. I chose three greens and one purple, and we painted the walls as a family. The paint smelled terrible, and it was probably too hot to open the windows, but it was fun. That weekend, I slept on an air mattress in my sister’s room. We sometimes had sleepovers like that, when relatives visited or we were scared or for a whole month after our grandma died.

The room, in its former glory.

My room was at the front of the house, with windows I could peek through to see who was knocking at the front door. My sister and I used to evaluate our risk for kidnapping and other disasters, fueled only by scary books, intergenerational trauma, and our own imaginations. She said if a bad guy came to our house, he’d come to my room first. She wasn’t being mean or trying to scare me. It was merely a fact dictated by the layout of our house. Whenever I sleep in my childhood room, this crosses my mind. “They’d get me first,” I think, with a bit of relief that “they” won’t get anyone else first. Then I pad out to the front door to check the locks.

I was three and my sister was seven when we moved in and chose our rooms. Our first impressions were from the previous owner’s open house. A little boy lived in one room, which had a big window, childish wallpaper that looked like confetti, and “boy” toys neatly arranged for prospective homeowners to see. The other room was a sophisticated guest room with a globe in it. My sister chose the boy room, and I chose the globe room, and we both thought we’d won. Unfortunately, the globe did not come with my room, so perhaps I didn’t understand the rules of the game. Years later, my sister said she felt guilty for “making” me take that room, with its smaller windows (and higher kidnapping risk). I don’t remember manipulation of any kind. I loved my tall ceilings and knowing that a boy had never lived there.

Most of the furniture has changed, but my seven foot tall bookcase is still there, stocked with books and a pile of Teen Vogues circa 2004-2006. I haven’t decided what to do with those yet. On one hand, I’d never show them to my children. On the other, they’re cultural artifacts, and I still love collaging. 

Every time I visit, I whittle down the possessions, leaving the room slightly emptier than I found it. I excavate and stay up too late, lost in the memorabilia of my past. I downsize, slowly but surely. But there are still cards, school papers, yearbooks, and a mini Ziplock holding a few foreign coins. There’s my junior prom dress and a ceramic fairy box with all my baby teeth in it. My parents love when I take things back to LA with me or part with them forever. I’ve made progress; they must see that. Nothing’s on the walls. Only two drawers of the dresser have my things in them. My parents remain hopeful, saying, “When you have a big house, you can take all of it.” 

“Parents are always saying that,” my fiancé empathizes. 

I recognize my luck, that my parents keep things for me, still. That my room got to look how it always did for so many years. That I had my own space growing up, to hide, read, sleep, think. I’m sentimental, nostalgic, a Cancer sun, the youngest child, an Enneagram 6, you get the picture, duh. I’m lucky my room is still there and that even greige, I’m always welcomed back home.

A couple summers ago, I was picking onions at my former neighbor/science teacher’s farm across town from my parents’ house. He asked me what it’s like to visit home, have my parents’ turned my room into a gym yet? 

“No,” I said. “It’s a shrine.”