#1, Eisenhower Street: The first thing I recall about my bedroom is the wallpaper.  It’s a vintage, nursery print with sepia brown tones that remind you of those old time photographs you can pay to get taken in tourist traps like Wisconsin Dells or Niagara Falls.  The pattern features a rocking horse, a teddy bear, alphabet blocks and balls.  My bedroom set included a matching dresser, with an attached mirror, night stand and a full-sized bed.  Now, having a full-sized bed as a small child was pretty unheard of back in the early 1980s and I mostly saw it as a curse.  When all of my little friends could find cool patterned sheets with the cartoon icons of the era: My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake and even Cabbage Patch Dolls (which incidentally translated in a pretty scary representation when illustrated in 2D for printing onto fabric sheets), I couldn’t find any “cool” sheets for a full-sized bed.  I do remember someone tracking down a set of Care Bear Cousins sheets (not even the OG Care Bears, but the spin offs), but at least it was something!

I remember the windows seeming really high up, like windows you would find more in a basement, but that’s likely because I was just small – and so most things seemed really high up.  The bedroom door didn’t have a lock on it and when it was time for me (and even more so, my mom) to have a mid-day quiet time, my mom would tie the outside of my doorknob to the knob on the bathroom door to keep me confined.  I was a strong-willed child and being “trapped” as I saw it was torture.  It was, at most, 1 hour – and my mom didn’t even tell me that I had to sleep.  I just had to play quietly, on my own.  But to me, this was brutal and an excuse to throw massive tantrums, pulling at the door and yelling and crying.

My room was the first door near the kitchen and I remember drifting off to sleep on nights when my grandma, Gigi, was staying with us.  I had my door open and she was still cleaning up the mess of dishes and dinner leftovers, all the while singing away to Zippity Doo Dah.

#2, Silver Moon Lane: The bedroom I moved into in our new house was upstairs and at the end of the hallway.  It had a grey and light blue theme, with a wallpaper border that matched my floral bedding.  I still had the same bedroom set, but was now grateful for that full-sized bed.  (In fact, my own children are still using this bedroom furniture 40 years later!)  I had a rolling microwave stand that doubled as a book case and a shelf for my stereo and CD collection.  I had one of those stereos prominent in the 90s with a CD player, tape deck, and removable speakers.  I remember listening to the “Top 9 at 9” on the local radio station and trying to record the hits on my cassette tape (trying to stay awake to pause it during the DJ’s commentary between songs).  On the bedroom door, I had hung a banner that I created on our Print Shop computer program.  “Welcome to Paradise” it said, with a jungle theme – palm trees with monkeys swinging from the branches.  I had a large cork bulletin board hung on one wall where I would display photos with my friends and other posters or quotes.  This bulletin board also displayed the “contract” my mom and I had signed after a few disputes re: my choices to experiment with body piercing during my first year away at college.  My mom, unhappy with my recent eyebrow piercing, had threatened to terminate the financial support that they offered me for living expenses.  I had pushed back, questioning what my style choices had to do with my college education.  Eventually we agreed – as long as I maintained above a B average, my financial stability wouldn’t be at risk.

Christmas time was always big at my house, and my mom would haul out the cardboard boxes of decorations, allowing Melanie and I to pick some out to display in our bedrooms.  We had rolls of that glittery white cotton meant to look like a blanket of snow and multiple Santas and reindeer and other figurines.  I remember some hobo type characters and always trying to snag the one who appeared to be drinking a bottle of alcohol, since that seemed sort of scandalous from my innocent, 10-year-old perspective.  I also had a table-top artificial tree that I would display on the nightstand, falling asleep to glow of the colourful Christmas lights.

A final memory of that bedroom was the glow stars on the ceiling. Hundreds of glow-in-the-dark star stickers, which we had arranged to even mirror some of the constellations: the Big Dipper and Orion. And when my mom would come to say goodnight, she would whisper, “the stars are out.”