Room-inations

Green room, headroom, boardroom.

Chat room. Safe room.

Making room, taking up room.

We’re always looking, it seems, for more room, but by nature we build walls to contain our space. Living room, family room, bedroom, even outdoor “rooms.” Do fences create rooms, too? In a sense, oh yes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as I unpack a litany of boxes, seemingly endless, from a recent move a full four states away from the point of origin. Not that it was my original point of origin. But it was the latest place I left.

We move a lot, not because we have to but because we wish to. There are a lot of places to go, as it turns out, a lot of places to be. And just when I think I’ve found it, things change. Rather than run, I embrace it. Because I have hope. Because I just may be completely insane.

But it’s all about space really and where we live is, in the end, a way to define that space. To define ourselves.

In my case, I’ve finally hit upon a house, a roomy old nuanced house that I’ve slipped in to, comfortable as a cat in a lap. It’s been loved at some point, or various points, throughout its one hundred years, its rough edges smoothed over repeatedly, sanded down, rewrapped but not obscured. It is who it was to begin with, I think, and we see the ripple of imperfect plaster and curling edges of reluctant wallpaper beneath fresh paint. We see the swirling grain of the wood in the partially-finished banister posts. We see the raw, persistent strength in the unfettered attic, steaming with summer heat as we cross its creaking floors under trusses older than any of us.

It’s delicious.

And it could just be another old house, but it's my collection of rooms, my space, the place that tells something about me. That contains me. And by having the comfort of a space that is truly my own, I am somehow more free.

Because it’s easy to venture into the unknown, when you have a place to come home.