“What does this door go to?”
A very innocent and common question, usually asked from a friend or a cousin or a babysitter as they eagerly and questioningly stood in the corner of my green and pink, wallpapery room
The door was ice cream-white but disguised with animal stickers, then later, lots and lots of photos.
These photos were tiny snapshots of a special moment at a friend’s birthday party or a sweaty, slow day at summer camp.
But either way, there were enough layered years of sticky things against that poor door that my dad would get annoyingly frustrated.
“This will tear off the paint,” he scolded, and I would rebelliously roll my eyes or turn a shoulder and ignore the very words that, quite literally, just filled up our space.
Like his “Debby Downer” comment never even happened.
Anyway, the door.
What does it go to?
“The attic,” I answered back in a mature, sophisticated manner.
I usually opened the magical, mysterious door like a proud mother showing off never-ending “Why does she keep showing me these?” pictures of her new baby.
There was the nearly life-size dollhouse in the corner that my parents picked up in Mentone.
It was made to look just like our house at the time, green shutters and all.
And of course, the glow-in-the-dark stars forever pressed against the ceiling.
(Those stars decorated the exact place that my 6thgrade best friend Caroline taught me how to put a bra on with the snaps in the front, right above my belly button, instead of blindly twisting and turning for an hour and a half to hear that final click of a snap behind me).
There were my horse ribbons mounted and showcased so elegantly against the chalkboard at the back of the attic, ribbons from hunter jumper extravaganzas all across the hot, sticky state of Alabama.
And don’t forget the forgotten dusty drawers of my oldest brother’s basketball cards, neatly rubberbanded and stacked.
There were so many of them, they were bound to outweigh the dresser they lived in.
Oh, and the old Barbie and Ken playsets up against the leaning-left “Don’t hit your head on the ceiling” corner.
The attic was my favorite hideaway as a kid with the same ice cream-white walls and ceiling as the door that led to its concealed quarters.
This top-secret space was like my very own version of a glamorous, grownup studio apartment in the city.
A treehouse loft somewhere far and fancy like Birmingham, with its wood floors and perfect rectangular sky window.
This dreamlike window was a shared eye into the outside world-
Sometimes I borrowed the eye to look at the Sky,
And sometimes she borrowed the eye to look at me.
And I wonder, Was this where I fell in love with the color blue?
Our Sky Angel,
She held us.
She watched our games and listened to our songs and giggles like they were her own.
She knew us,
She knew me.
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