Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Hidden Staircases, Secret Rooms

So, being thirty has its perks, aside from being able to date from three different decades without being (terribly) creepy and the assumption that if you're living with your parents it's because you're taking care of them in their twilight years and not still mooching while you finish college.

Of the perks I just found out is that I get to join Studio 30+ which is a nifty group for bloggers over the age of 30.  The following is my first weekly post for this group.   The prompt is "Childhood Dreams".

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I'm on the floor again.  It's the third night in a row.  The third night sleeping in the big giant bed in the loft at my grandparents house.  The third night I've woken on the floor beside the little dormer window, the one where you have to crouch down because the ceiling slopes so low that it's impossible, even for a little girl such as myself, to stand at full height.  I'm chilled, in my thin purple nightgown with the kittens on the tummy. Rings of frost circle the leaded panes of the window.  I can see my breath hanging in the night air.

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Groggily, I turn to crawl back over to the enormous queen-sized bed with the royal blue spread, but out of the corner of my eye something is not right.  In the tiniest corner of the room, right next to the window, the only window in the room, right where normally there's stood only an oddly angled door to a small storage cabinet - angled oddly to compensate for the low sloping ceiling - there in the mist of the vague light of the earliest time of the morning is a staircase.

"That's never been there before.." I think to myself.  However, I am very small, and my mind is always jumping.  But I'm sure if there had always been a staircase there, I would have noticed.

Hunched over, I crawl back towards the window.  Looming before me is a dark, narrow, foreboding wooden staircase.  The top steps are obscured by the blackness of the tiny passageway.  I can only imagine what waits at the top.

Over the years I've dreamed time and time again of familiar places, places I have been to countless times, spent countless hours in, visited on numerous occasions.  My grandparents house, my high school, the local post office, the library.  I dream of these places, and always, in my dreams there is something new, something undiscovered in places I thought I knew as I know my own body.   Always there are stairs.  Reaching conclusions, making discoveries, stretching the boundaries of my imagination.  My secret, hidden surprises.

9 comments:

  1. I remeber a dream from when I was a kid. I was standing on the shore of a lake and there were lots of animals standing in the lake and they were all crying. All apart from a big wooden bear that was standing on its hind legs and laughing. I don't know why I remember this dream.

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  2. Very neat post, interesting what we dream about the places we have been in our lives. Visiting from Studio 30+.

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  3. I really like your style. I feel like you're taking me ona trip or something when I read you. Well done.

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  4. I dream about the house I lived in when I was little all the time, funny how these spaces stay with us.

    love your blog, visiting from Studio30

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  5. Awesome. I used to dream that I was wandering in the house I live in now, and would see a door that had never been there before. I opened the door and there was a GIGANTIC living room fully furnished, kitchen, and a LOFT BED! I dreamt that I moved into this space and nobody knew about it. Somebody I worked with told me the room must signify a "safe place". I had this dream numerous times and then one night I dreamt that when I walked in, there stood a young woman holding a baby. I said, "What are you doing in my house??" and she told me she had rented it for herself and her baby. So I left. I never had that dream again. I told the woman I worked with and she said, "well, I guess somebody else needed a safe place more than you did."

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  6. i just joined too! even though i am not officially 30 yet they totally let me in! woot! why are we not 30+ bffs?!?!

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  7. Great blog, Very interesting. I once had dream that I running through a very large house where all the doors were closed, so I kept running up and down stairs and never got anywhere. Welcome!!!

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  8. what lovely prose...you immerse us immediately...i like that in a write...congrats on the goddess award....

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  9. Really nicely written, I gave you one of my weekly Goddess Awards. Come by anytime and collect it if you like.

    Happy Blogging!
    ~Elise

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