Two rooms in one. Empty of mortal things, memories echo within. Two distinct rooms until Dad took a sledge hammer and knocked through. The seventies modernisation of open plan rooms. We had no money to pay the builders, Dad did it himself. I watched in awe, and worried if the house would fall down. It didn’t. Dad knew what he was doing. Of course he did. “Measure twice cut once” His mantra stays with me to this day. I taught my son the same. A legacy from the grandad he never knew lives on in him.
I wanted a square as I’d just learnt shapes in school. I loved the never ending lines and corners and didn’t understand how an arch could be stronger. That was science beyond my years. Mum wanted an arch but loved her daughters. Dad made a square and installed sliding doors. We needed some fifties and sixties privacy in our new seventies open plan room. The novelty of TV needed to be shut out when we ate our family meals. It never happened. The doors remained opened unless adults talked about serious things and children had to disappear and behave. My inquisition always got the better of me. I peeked through the crack in the doors. I listened and discovered family secrets I didn’t understand and couldn’t ask mum without revealing my secret source and suffering consequences of disobeying. I discovered I hated secrets and not knowing. I needed to know it all. Good or bad. I hated being told half a story. I always worked out there’s something missing and then the hurt that I wasn’t trusted enough with the whole story. An innocence dimmed by the crack of light shining through the sliding doors.
Mums arch won in the end. The sliding doors slid away down to the council tip. No recycling back in the eighties. The freedom of no doors meant no secrets behind those doors but secrets emerged into the open plan living dining lounge room. Straightforward, no nonsense, blunt, no airs or graces yet. Like Dad, I call a spade a spade. Like Dad I had to learn how to navigate the sophistication of polite middle class society clashing against my soul embedded in working class roots.
Still no TV dinners for us. As the sliding doors slid into an arch, dinnertime took over from teatime. We sat around the table as a family to eat home cooked meals and discuss school work, hard manual work complete with shop stewards, unions, redundancy, plans for camping holidays, hiking with friends but few hopes or dreams. Working class dreams extended to the end of the week. Middle class dreams reached into the future. I dreamt of a world beyond. I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew I wanted to leave. The world called my name and I needed to follow.
Now the empty rooms wait for the next family creating new memories and a silent tear rolls down my face. I still dream of a world beyond but question if that world resided in this room all along just hidden amongst the secrets of my youth.
Hindsight is a hell of a thing.