A Conglomerated Collection

redecorate

I always loved packing my things; it was usually for some exciting trip or vacation. This time, it was different. I wasn't getting rid of anything I packed away, but I was moving it out of my room for a short time. I had just bought new bedroom furniture and paint for the walls, and I was getting ready to redecorate. With peach walls boasting hand-painted flowers bordering the top, my childhood bedroom was my haven. It had a white princess-style bed with a trundle, an elegant canopy draped over the bed, and a Hello Kitty alarm clock that projected the time onto the ceiling. Rather than keep a mattress under the bed, the trundle was stocked with costumes, accessories, and stuffed animals that didn't fit on my bed. Throughout the years, the walls had been scraped, chipped, and damaged by dancing, playing, and fighting. Each dent and mark had a story to tell.

My bedroom door used to be plain white; one day, a five-year-old me decided to put a velvety sticker of the Easter Bunny on the door. The pink and green added a much-needed splash of color to my otherwise boring door. I enjoyed its vibrant color until the seventh grade when I decided to replace it with a poster for Avengers: Age of Ultron. It took forever to peel the sticker off the door, and once it was off, a large, yellow stain from the glue remained in its spot. I covered it with the poster. Recently, when I took the poster down, I came across the sticker glue, still stuck on my door; I had forgotten it was there. My mom never knew it was there in the first place. It would not come off, so I gave up trying.

The first large piece of my dream childhood bedroom to go was the canopy. I loved playing in it. My brother would wrap himself in the netted fabric, claiming he was stuck in a spider web. I followed his example as any younger sister would. I found ways to suspend my Barbie dolls in the canopy without holding them; they were climbing a mountain to save their friend at the top or swimming up a cascading waterfall. The day the canopy broke, I was sitting on my bed with my Barbies and my sister. The dolls were fighting over something in the game, and I ended up falling off my bed. I had been sitting on some of the fabric of the canopy, so when I fell, the plastic ring at the top snapped, causing the canopy to fall flat.

The next thing that left my bedroom was my princess bed with a trundle. The trundle became a source of imagination for anyone who entered my bedroom. It was never tidy-much to my mother's chagrin-but I knew exactly what was inside. And I knew that whenever it was opened, something fun was bound to happen. With a simple change of clothes, I would magically transform from a seven-year-old girl to Cinderella or Aurora, my favorite princesses. All I needed to complete the ensemble was a tiara and plastic high heels, buried deep within the fabrics of other costumes. My little sister liked to wear the random scarves and pumps that my mom once wore to a friend's wedding. We traipsed around the room in our regalia, using our imaginations and correcting each other when we did something the other didn't like. We became dancers, blasting whatever disc was currently in the CD player and jumping around like pop stars. When it was time for dinner, we shed our new identities, discarded our outfits on the floor, and became ourselves again because Mom was making fried chicken. Cinderella and her made-up younger sister didn't eat fried chicken, but we did.

I loved that trundle and the elegant bed frame, but I was getting older, and I needed space in my tiny bedroom for a desk. The solution: sell the princess bed and ask my dad to build a loft. It all happened so fast. We cleaned out the trundle bed, took it apart and moved it out, and began to build the loft bed attached to the wall. It took less than two days; I had to steal the ladder from my brother's bunk bed because my dad didn't have time to build me a ladder. At least, not yet. Thrilled to finally have the bed I had been dreaming about for months, I loved sleeping five feet in the air. With this change, I finally had the space to have a desk, a small bookshelf, my dresser, and my rabbit's cage in my bedroom at the same time. This was a novel concept. Not long after the loft was built, I discovered I could precariously hang my Eno hammock under my bed. I sat in it to do homework, practice my ukulele, and read. Once my dad got around to building a ladder and a rail for my bed, I would have the bedroom of my dreams.

I enjoyed the loft until I went to college. After having to climb up to my bunked bed every night at school, and having to climb up to my lofted bed every night at home, I got sick of it. I started devising plans to put my bed back on the ground while still keeping all the furniture in my room. Every way I tried to draw it out, I couldn't fit everything at once. I petitioned my parents to move into our bonus room above the garage; my sister took my older brother's room when he moved out, and he had the biggest room upstairs, so I wanted an upgrade as well. When that didn't pan out, I switched my tune. I could no longer fit in a twin bed, so I began to ask for a double. I shopped online until I found the exact IKEA furniture I liked; I measured my room over and over, sketching out ideas of how to rearrange my furniture. I even took a trip to the store to pick out paint swatches I liked so I could repaint my walls.

This excitement lasted until the summer after my sophomore year of college. When my parents finally agreed and all the changes were staring me in the face, I began to backtrack. I liked my loft; my dad built it for me and I couldn't destroy his hard work. I didn't want to change the colors of my walls. I grew up hearing stories of how my parents and my brother-then only two years old-painted my bedroom with me in mind. The flowers bordering the top of the walls were unique and special. My parents painted every detail. I couldn't possibly paint over them and erase that memory. Nevertheless, we took the loft out of the room, completing the first step in the transformation. Next, we bought the furniture that would replace my current pieces. The last step was painting my room, and that was the step I dreaded most.

The night before we started painting, I sat in my bed and cried. Everything was happening so fast. I was working a real job, I was about to turn twenty, and the final step in sealing off my childhood was painting over the flowers on the walls. I didn't want to grow up. That meant going into the real world, paying taxes, and leaving my carefree dress-up days behind. Gone were the summer nights when I played with my neighbors in the backyard for hours. Now, work and school filled most of my free time. Even in the summer, I was constantly busy. Things were changing; it was going so quickly that I could hardly catch a breath. When the time came to officially repaint, I thought I would regret deciding to redo my room. I liked my new bed frame, bookshelf, and desk, but for twenty years, I had lived with the same walls. Those walls saw me make and lose friends. The walls may have been abused now and then, but they were loved. They watched me for twenty years, growing up and changing. The last thing I wanted to do was erase them. But after moving everything back into my room and finishing the walls, it still feels like home. It might be different, but there are still trinkets here and there that serve as childhood reminders, such as the handful of stuffed animals sitting on my bookshelf or the high school pictures hanging on my bulletin board. Getting rid of physical reminders of my childhood didn't mean forgetting about it. After all, even though the room had been redecorated, the walls still sported the same storied holes and dents.