There isn't much space in my closet. I navigate beneath the sloped ceiling and narrow confines through a long thin tributary of soft boxes filled with future nostalgia - old report cards, broken toys, a nude Barbie that I'd bitten off the toes and fingers from (she'd stepped on a landmine, poor dear!), rows of billowing dresses I'd never worn nor ever would I, and shards of broken wall plaster that tattoo my knees with white powdery indents. I had crawled over a carpet tack strip the last time I'd entered. The consequential tetanus boosters were highly unpleasant but I couldn't be deterred as last time I'd vowed that I'd finally open the tiny door at the closet's end.
For a moment I see movement at the edge of my flashlight beam and I start - heart in my throat! - but it's just a tiny spider building a gorgeous fractal art piece in order to earn her unsuspecting dinner.
I shift aside a final decomposing box and there it is! The attic door. The mysterious and flimsiest of barricades, separating my insatiably curious self self from adventure, intrigue, and all-knowing. The door that not only (likely) prevented the squirrels that infest our walls from domestic ingress, but a delectably forbidden space.
Earlier this morning was a regular Spring Saturday, bursting with singular purpose - the potential for the realisation of the "coulds" and "maybes". Innumerable hopes and dreams, sown by all school children who live for the dismissal bell's reverentially-anticipated chimes on every endless Friday, were yet again to be reaped. I'd therefore decided to harangue my harried mother by re-inquiring about the tiny door.
She'd been dusting whilst nursing my brother. He'd clung to her, hoisted against her body by a beige fleece sling, quite resembling a contented natal primate. She, despite his beatific and worshiping gaze through his heavy lids, wore a scowl and long tresses resplendent with cobwebs. A macabre bridal veil of sorts for a marriage with a djinn.
"Don't go in there! There's only storage, planks, and insulation. It's dangerous!! Just stay out already." Her tone was overly shrill and I'd expected as such. My mother, so quick to anger and yet twice as quick to love, has been especially exhausted as of late. A newborn drains more than your teats. They are beautiful and soft little cherubic vampires.
Though I've totally adored my brother from the time he was born (of course!), I Also know that I will Never want babies. I enjoy sleeping in, reading, & quiet far too much to sacrifice these essential restorers of sanity that abruptedly disappear the day a new mummy returns from her midwife's birthing centre. I also see my mum's perpetual sadness, like a private secret confided within, only to be betrayed by the most two-faced of eyes, & I know that she both loves us AND yearns for her carefree youth. I NEVER wish to feel that.
Her transformation from a soft and feminine security to a shrill and nervously-exhausted shell seems to have happened overnight. Her extreme fear and reluctance to assuage my simple desire for a Coraline-style adventure only further proves that her real "self" may be completely gone. Yet as angry as I feel over her blatantly misinformed fears regarding attics and tiny doors, my pity for her grows in relation to the smudge of grime on her sweating upper lip as she cleans.
"Don't ask again! Now then, would you please change Antony's diaper?", and with a practiced pass rivaled only by the choreography of a Ballerina or an NBA All-Star, she handed me my brother.
I finished Antony's changing & excused myself to read in my room, and now here I sit. I feel like I'm atoning for my planned disobedience by reflecting upon how hard it must be to work non-stop & raise children without help (I've no idea about our fathers' identities, nor even of the existence of any grandparents. Asking once and being answered in sobs has soured me on the topics).
Fortunately, despite feeling guilty for my mum's plight, I can't argue with the anticipatory chills I get just from gazing at this tiny door. The possibilities of wonderment that lay just beyond my flickering flashlight's murky light is significantly quashing any guilt-fueled trepidation.
I chide myself for worrying about the physical world when I have the potentially ethereal just a half-metre beyond me, so I give the door a push. Of course it sticks tight. Humidity and wood are rarely my obliging friends - take it from someone who lives in a very old converted duplex (apparently built, I digress, without the assistance of a single level!).
Disappointment floods through me, embalming me with a cold panic, nearly snuffing my excitement, but I'm not one who often gives up, so I feel the door's edges for a latch, a hinge, or even a knot in the wood.
Instead, I feel carved writing in the wood.
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