The passage of time always hits home around the holidays. It’s a combination of reflecting back on both the year that you are leaving and the one you are about to enter. For me, the new year also rings in my birthday and contemplation about growing older, maintaining health and happiness and serving my purpose in life.
But there’s one place I always find where time seems to stand still: the bedroom where I spent my formative years in Chattanooga. I go back every few months and often at Christmas. The room, with a few exceptions, remains locked in time.
My old bedroom is bright yellow because I wanted to wake up bathed in sunshine every day and have my own color identity. The rest of the house reflects my mother’s color, purple. The drapes remain open at my insistence; I have never liked closed curtains that block the view of the outdoors. Small rows of yellow beads decorate these curtains, a concession I made to my grandmother who said “Beads are not curtains and my granddaughter will not have a hippie room.”
The furniture, faux bamboo painted yellow, screams “young girl’s room” as do the many high school photos displayed on the dressers. The Yorx eight track player and clock radio on my night table actually works. Book shelves contain the Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins series, slim volumes of childhood poetry and an assortment of high school required reading along with my yearbooks. The cheer leading pom poms 
are gone but Raggedy Ann and Andy and numerous stuffed animals stare down at my bed from the shelves and chairs.
Over the years the collection of furry toys and strange looking dolls keeps growing thanks to my mother. A colorful painting of a clown holding a small white dog still hangs by my closet. The clown’s eyes have watched over me since I was an infant.
As a high school student, my bright yellow room was where I dreamed of my future, and wrote numerous short stories, poems and entries in my diaries. I still have every single story and diary. It was also a room where I retreated after a boyfriend breakup or a fight with my parents and where I played with makeup and hair to get the right look.
Coming back to my little yellow room as a mature woman, much less a married one, has always had its moments. Intimacy in two single beds pushed together is never easy. While some people may be titillated with the idea of having sex in your childhood bedroom, somehow all those dozens of round black eyes from assorted dolls, clowns and stuffed animals staring down at you makes you feel like you are never alone. The shelves have eyes and the walls have ears. Snuggling is safer and less stressful. This year David quietly started moving some of the creatures out of the room to give us some space. “Put everything back when you leave,” my mother reminded him.
And then there’s the foot traffic. My mother’s dogs seem to know how to open doors with their paws to invade in my room and mark their territory. My mother holds conversations through the doors. One night several years ago my father barged into forgetting I had David with me, The shock of seeing his daughter in bed with a grown man made him back out quickly even though we were both wearing full pajamas and reading.
In fact, the only thing that has changed in the yellow room is my closet. Where my high school uniforms and weekend clothes once hung are my late father’s jackets and shirts, perfectly color coordinated in ice cream shades. I find it comforting to have some of his clothes there to remember him when he was still a natty dresser rather than wearing hospital gowns.
Yes, time stands still in my little yellow room even though I moved away and grew older. But, despite the passage of time, over thirty years now. some things still have not changed. The fiercely independent young girl who dreamed of being a writer, becoming a successful business woman, traveling the world and finding a handsome prince is deep down inside still the same person.
And I know when the world starts to spin too fast, I can come home to the little yellow room to slow down.
Very sweet memory…and an 8-track that still works – wow! Lovely story, Melanie!