Sense of Place (2/26/09)

For years before my family moved into our brand new house, my parents used to complain every season about having to go in the attic to get down decorations. The three girls in my family (including myself) did the same. This was mainly due to the fact that my father, sisters, and I were the ones who actually had to go in the attic to get the boxes down and put them back up. My mom’s job was to take everything out of the boxes, out it up for the season, and the pack it back up so we could put them lovingly back into the attic. This job was mostly complained about because the attic was cold above our garage with no heating or air-conditioning. This meant that no matter whether we were getting Christmas decorations down or summer wreaths, our body temperatures were always at one extreme when we ventured up there. In order to get into our old attic, both cars had to be removed from the garage and a rope from the center of the ceiling had to be pulled for the unstable wooden ladder to come down. The first person to climb the ladder had to turn on the solitary light by pulling a string at the top of the ladder. Once one succeeded in the ladder climb, danger was not over. With low ceilings and nails sticking out from those ceilings, if you were not constantly on your guard, you were sure to get hurt. There was one small window in the attic but it brought in little to no light (especially seeing as most of our adventures up there were at night). The floor of the attic had been covered in boards because if it hadn’t been, we would have fallen through to the garage below. Boxes were always piled everywhere and it didn’t help that the season we wanted was usually in the back because the boxes hadn’t been touched for an entire year. There were, of course, other things in the attic besides boxes: an old rocking horse, lots of dust, a red metal shelving unit, the occasional dead mouse, etc. I remember complaining about these escapades to the attic, but looking back on it, it was part of where we lived and the decorations have come with us to our new house and even though we no longer have an above-garage attic, they, just like the memories of the old attic, will stay with us forever.
-Julia St. John