A special place

Dear Diary,
Saying good-bye is never easy. Especially if you're saying good-bye to the only place you've ever known. Especially if it is a place that holds most of your memories.

I look around one last time, the ugly grayish white fake wood paneling with the spot that looks like the Hulk when it's dark and you're trying to sleep. The sea of multi-tone blue shag carpeting where the mermaids would sit while I told them stories and the dolphins would jump through my hula-hoop, it's been a while since my sea friends came to play.

It's empty now, in my mind I take my things out of the truck and put them back where they go, my bed on the left side of the room YS's bed on the right (it still irks me that YS got to be near the window even though I am older)  I pull out the white and yellow striped sheets and the light blue comforters and make the beds… something is wrong; that's right YS never made the bed, I yank that comforter off and drop it on the floor where it always ended up. Now I put the white dresser with three drawers on my side and three drawers on YS's side between the beds. The small table lamp with the plain beige shade goes in the middle of the dresser because I’m supposed to share (just a little closer to my side, so I can see better to read). Books I need my stack of books, my mind finds them, not the books that were there most recently but my favorites through the years, picture books mixed with chapter books. My dual deck AM/FM boom box sits behind my books, I can’t see much of it from the door, but a little black peeks over the edge of the dresser toward my bed, and the antenna pokes out from behind my stack of books.

Now for the toy boxes that Santa brought us for Christmas years ago, the ones that mom made, hand painted with a soft top so we could sit on them. That’s right they go at the foot of our beds, now my mind fills them with all of my beloved toys that did not make it to the truck, the only toys on the truck are the ones that lived on my bed. I need to put them on the bed near my pillow there that’s better the stuffed dinosaur pajama holder from grandpa the Christmas before he died, and my big bear that has guarded me for as long as I can remember, the smaller bear that my mom made.

I notice the walls are blank, still just the ugly paneling, the window is big and empty looking onto the street, where are the curtains? I go to the dumpster and I find the dingy yellow curtains with the horizontal slit at the bottom where YS tore them while fighting with pirates. I put my shelf back up and put up my special collection of what-nots. I put up YS’s stuffed toy hammock (I know I always complained about it but the place is just not right without that burst of color) and I put the ugly orange monkey hanging down because that’s where it goes. I put up the water color of the ocean that our uncle made many years before we were born, it’s not the greatest picture and it’s in a cheap plastic black frame, but it’ always been centered over the dresser. I take all my drawings and hang them back over my bed; I’m a very good artist, maybe when I have nieces or nephews I’ll draw them a picture to hang in there room. I hang YS’s magazine cut outs and school art projects back where they were.

There now it’s all set in my mind, everything unpacked and put where it goes. I focus all of my energy on the scene before me. It’s important to remember because if I ever want to come back to this place this will be the only door to the only bedroom I have ever known.

Until next time,
Me