Memoir

The Attic Bedroom Was My Special Sanctuary

Eight years of memories tucked between paneled walls

For my 10th birthday, I had a slumber party in my attic room. (author’s photo)

After Dad left, Mom took my brother and me to visit him on the weekends.

Dad and my stepmom Dora bought a bungalow on a boulevard in 1978. A grassy median divided the two streets and old-fashioned lamp posts lined up like soldiers down the middle of the boulevard.

Even though their new home was medium-sized, I felt like it was a mansion. It had an upstairs and a basement and my siblings and I were going to have our own rooms! After I graduated eighth grade, I moved in with my dad for high school. I left my pink and white room with the canopy bed at Mom’s and moved into my swanky ’70s disco room at Dad’s. I’d spend countless hours in this room over the next eight years and grow from a child into a woman.

The perfect place

My room was a walk-in attic at the front of the house. My two tiny bedroom windows overlooked the front porch roof and the boulevard below. My view rivaled that of a keeper in a lighthouse.

I could see everything — the houses across the street, cars parked up and down the road, and the kids riding their bikes down the sidewalks. At night, I’d sit on the floor beneath my window and peer down at…