volume ninety
lifecycle of a room
Nan tells tales of stairs under the house that indicate a previous entryway that would have meant the room didn’t exist in the first build. I can’t imagine the last time she would have been under the house to see the stairs, or if she ever was. Likely Poppy was under there and relayed the information when they were both younger. The stove they replaced when they bought the home thirty years ago was from the 70s according to the label (which is fifty years ago despite my brain telling me it was thirty years ago). I wonder if that stove was put in when the home was built or when the previous owners expanded their square footage and added a sunroom and an extra living area, and a laundry?
All I know is, from the age of four it was my older sister’s room, at least for the first part of a holiday. Nan and Pop had their room, complete with their own pink bathroom, my little sister and I shared the spare room, and my older sister, too cool to share, had the sunroom. Until, as was tradition for a blip in my life, on our annual summer trip to Nan and Pop’s golf-side, beach-side home, would be interrupted by the arrival of Mum and Dad a week later. They would take over the spare room, forcing my little sister and I onto the fold-out in the sunroom and cramping my older sister’s style.
It's funny how that “leave Boxing Day with Nan and Pop who visited us for Christmas and head to their place, then Mum and Dad will arrive for New Year” tradition likely only happened once, but my brain believes it was my childhood, grabbing on.
But this is about the room.
It was the room the three of us girls sat in one rainy afternoon, asked to go and give Nan and Pop some peace. There was a little old TV in the room then, the screen rounded, the remote non-existent and the frame faux timber. The afternoon movie was Billy Maddison. We saw what would become a go-to quotebook for us, for the first time that day and we laughed until we held our little tummies, afraid our bladders would let go.
It was the room that Nan would hide in to watch The Bold and The Beautiful, for some reason not using the lounge room (or the “quiet room” as we knew it). I have a vague memory of sitting alongside her — quietly, just once — as she folded laundry and watched.
It’s the room that when I was old enough to start making my own trips to spend time with Nan and Pop that they would put me in. The other side of the house. My own space. Later bringing a high school boyfriend en route to a concert in the city. Nan would keep us in separate beds but we were together when we tried desperately to fill an old zippo with lighter fluid to get it working again. We wanted to look cool while lighting our cigarettes that we hid while in that house, only to have Nan come in and ask what the awful smell was. Everything about that boy stunk of evil, and the zippo fuel was no different.
Over the years, each time I have returned from Canada, annually as much as I can make that work with immigration hold-ups and pandemic hold-ups, I have seen it transform into a space for Poppy. Photos are hung on the wall of the family, most from previous decades that are more familiar to him, photos of him in black and white with golf friends, photos of him sporting long sideburns and big smiles, and framed awards for hole-in-ones.
Eventually, it is where he slept. His bad back keeping him up at night and so it became his room and I graduated to the spare room on my visits. Back where I began. The furniture the same. The lavender or ballet-pink duvet on rotation still the same. But the view out the window morphed as the house next door sold, was torn down and a two-storey replaced it.
The sunroom has been Pop’s room for a long time. Out of bounds. No reason to go in. No reason to enjoy the view of Nan’s roses, or the perspective of the street to people-watch the cul-de-sac, or the morning sun peaking over the garage as it rises over the ocean, or the midday warmth, or the memories… not without dementia-ridden accusations that slowly trickled in over time, implying things were going missing from his room.
Then the room transformed into a resting state. Returning after two months away, I feel Poppy has left. Gordy, as I now call him, his first name, a name he can recognise, has moved to a home-hoping-to-be-found-soon. In between. We visit him in a fluorescent-lit room, on a tiny single bed, with a blue blanket the same as everyone else’s. Everyone else there asks us the same thing when we arrive “When you leave, can I come with you? I don’t want to be here anymore”. A ward with code security and nurse-operated buzzers for doors and shattered glass from an obvious escape attempt. A ward filled with people who know less and less every day. A ward filled with people waiting for a room somewhere else. Waiting for a home. A ward where we try not to cry in Gordy’s presence because then he weeps.
I am really good at making him laugh. I love that.
The sunroom became the space for my godmother, Nan and Pop’s daughter, to stay when she was here for the weekend. The coldest room in the house on first light and the warmest once the sun trickles in.
Family members came and went, and lives needed to be returned to, as we all continue to await news that will bring us back here. Back to help Nan help Gordy into his new forever home. News that could take months.
The desk in the sunroom has been cleared by Nanny, and his calendar gone that held all the notes and permanent marker X’s when he would ask what day it was. A chair from the dining table has been brought in. All set up for me to work in privacy as I stay here another week. The cordless phone is all that remains, making sure I won’t miss a call if she is out. She awaits a call every day to say they have somewhere for him to go that isn’t the hospital, and every day there is no news.
The photos and awards still grace the walls, now accompanied by the artwork he made in his respite before they could no longer care for him. His cap sits on the shelf of the desk beside my right knee. His teddy bear sits on the shelf by his bed, waiting to join him in his new home.
But Poppy has left this room.
The bed that sits behind me as I write this, will never see his tiny shrinking body laying like a crescent moon again, the radio blaring for company, having his third nap of the day, when I would peek in just to watch him sleep.
I spend many hours a week writing, recording and preparing these love letters for you and it brings me so much joy. I want these to always be free so in order to support my work and keep these coming at no cost, you can:
🧡 forward it to just one friend! just one! telling them you love it, and you think they will too! or share it on your social media if you’re feeling super generous!
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here are three things I struggled with this week:
👨 Men who demand ego boosts before they will pay you any respect… and they are so oblivious to it… and they are related to you.
📺 Knowing that this week Nan and I started our latest reality TV watch: Farmer Wants A Wife. I will not be here to see it through with her until the end of the season and that is very, very upsetting.
🥶 It dropped to 16 degrees Celsius (60.8 Fahrenheit) and I bought track pants (or as they are known in Australia, tracky-dacks) from Kmart. I have officially adjusted to Australian weather.
here are three blessings from this week:
🫶 Holding Poppy’s hand.
™️ The day you get this in your inbox, I am hanging out with My Cooler Younger Cousin.
🚶♀️ Long walks to lookouts with the ladies (AKA Nan, my Aunty and Nan’s lovely neighbour).
here are three goals for the coming week:
🗞️ Finish all the (children’s section) puzzles Nan saved for me from every Sunday newspaper while I was in Perth.
😭 Try not to cry the entire flight from Sydney to Fiji to LAX to Vancouver. Layovers upon layovers in order to prolong my grief. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
🤑 Work, work, work all summer long, saving for my return to Aus ASAP.
here is something I enjoyed this week:
A VERY COOL HUMAN RELEASED A VERY COOL BOOK THIS WEEK! Chelsey does tarot to help writers, artists and business owners prioritise and nurture creativity AND is the author of The Tarot Spreads Yearbook!
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. I’m so grateful to those who read my substack 🧡 because I really love writing it to you,
LD
xoxo
Beautiful heart-rending writing. 🧡🧡
Beautiful, painful, joyful, sorrowful.