Someone else’s bedroom
a Blue Sky Black Sheep write
If there is hope in the past, I sometimes struggle to see it. The future features intermittent glimmers, though I do my best to ground here in the present moment, where hope lingers in the cracks of the concrete. Succulents bursting through granite rock side into the bright sunshine.
There’s a hand painted tile floor in this old italian bedroom, green leaves and blue and yellow flowers dot the white of a never ending pattern. I suppose, sprawled beneath the red iron bed frame upon which I sit, lies hope in the form of paintbrush strokes. In the slightly crooked, manually installed wooden cupboards to my left, and in the pressed flowers hung in a glass case above the bedside table.
Hope in its many forms. Only a hand filled to the brim with hope for a joyful house, the pattering of small children’s feet across this small terraced bedroom, could have had the patience to complete such an intricate pattern at this scale. I imagine the old knees, pressed against a pillow as the aching hands diligently caressed the cool tile floor. Perhaps sweat dripped from their brow like mine does now, back before this room had cotton curtains hanging from its windows.
I wonder, did the hopeful painter’s vision come to life as they imagined?
Do our hopes and dreams ever really manifest thus? Perhaps the children ran amok in the sweet attic bedroom, always choosing the bird’s eye view over the bedrooms that had been crafted just so with them in mind.
It’s always thus, I must remind myself. That joy comes out of the places we deign dark and dusty, tucked away into the crevices of our world only to be rediscovered and tended to by a newly tender heart.
Like my love for my grandmother’s hands, the wrinkles at the edges of her eyes. Such story to be found there.
What will my grandchildren discover in the tucked away bookcases that live within my body? Which cupboards are secretly wardrobes with a quiet Narnia pathway? What old musty mothball smell will they brave on their way to wonder?
sbmc
