Dreams

expansive rooms and parenting tweens

Photo by Francesco Califano

Dreams

I have a reoccurring dream that I live in a house where I find new rooms. Like, I’ll be cleaning out a closet or redecorating my kids’ room and realize that if you push clothes to the side or walk through another smaller door, there are additional spaces I did not know existed.

On the surface, I credit these dreams to New York City apartment living for five years in my twenties. (Our first baby slept in a closet once he toddled—closet door removed, baby gate installed, tiny mattress on the floor). Then subsequent small but deliberately appointed apartments and houses we’ve lived in since.

Our current house is about 2,000 sq ft. Very large for most, small for others. The six of us have plenty of room but we’re all guilty of over-collecting. Our kids share rooms. We routinely sort and give away stuff. Sometimes I miss that ‘invention is the mother of necessity’ feeling. No new babies to squeeze in somewhere or room partitions that daylight as video call backdrops. I have a home office and that feels weird.

It was kinda fun, having to figure it all out. Do weird stuff to make it work. Reinventing a room through moving furniture or swapping a rug or replacing a bookshelf with some treasure you found on the street corner. It was daily creativity. Colors and patterns and materials you lived with while you were cooking, or sleeping, nursing, crying, laughing, hosting, loving. Everything coming together into a mishmash of multi-purpose rooms bursting with frighteningly early wake-ups, golden afternoon light, and meandering wish i was here/ wish i wasn’t bedtimes. A day felt like a million. Tight spaces everywhere. One thing flowed into five which flowed into fourteen which then turned into the next day where you did it all again. But we were tied together in these spaces. We needed one another so deeply. That one won’t eat without me. That one won’t be clean without me. That one won’t say anything but will retreat without me.

I was the center of that house. My body was their safe place. I was as big as I needed to be, or as small as I thought I should be to keep the house and keep house. It was beautiful, it was ugly, and I wouldn’t take back single thing. A million things unsure, and taught upside-down, and me, so self-absorbed and young and trying, but still—a home. Somehow still their home.

Now they need me less, or maybe more, but different. It’s a shift, a play, then failure. Trying again to say the right thing, or nothing, right exactly when it’s needed. Being there but not too much. It’s a lot of driving side by side, no eye contact, to get the best conversation. It’s arm rubs and hugs. Did you know if you don’t pull away they hold on for minutes and minutes? Fifteen once. I cried. How often had I pulled away? Too busy? Too worried? From the kid I’m holding who in this moment is actually holding me.

Quietly, softly, earnest looks and sly smiles. Shared family lore and inside jokes. Favorite dinners, mutual over-stimulation at loud noises, disdain for the sour sponge, sensitivity about the smallest things. To be seen as you also see is something to experience, something I’ll turn over and over after they’ve flown the nest.

To be a home is a gift. To be their home is my greatest.