Waking Up to My Childhood

The cat kept waking me up. All during the night, she’d knead me like bread dough. I knew what she wanted. Food. But I also knew she wasn’t getting any. What I wasn’t getting was sleep. Pure, uninterrupted sleep.

I had another problem. A recent injury to my right rotator cuff, which gave me only moderate issues during the day, caused a lot of issues at night when I lay supine beneath the sheets. Lying on my left side wasn’t much better and rolling over on the right was out of the question. My husband, like me, wasn’t getting a lot of sleep either, what with me twisting and turning and adjusting all night. Not to mention my constant fussing at the cat.

One night, about two weeks ago or so, I got up in the middle of the night, grabbed my pillow in a huff and, after a stern look at the cat (who, quite frankly, didn’t care one bit), I marched into the front bedroom, climbed into the antique white, wrought-iron bed, and fell into a peaceful, uninterrupted sleep.

The bay windows of the room face east, so the next morning, as the sun crested over the neighbor’s roofline and spilled its rays through the blinds and sheers, I squinted one eye open. For a moment, there was a sense of familiarity blending with the unfamiliar. I knew where I was–in the front bedroom. But for a moment, I wasn’t sure why. Then I remembered. That darned cat and my darned shoulder. But why did it feel so familiar? I had never slept in that room before.

Later, both the hubby and I remarked how much better we’d slept without the other. (Such a sad statement!) I declared that until he got the cat in check and until my arm was much better, I would sleep in the front bedroom. Since then, every night at bedtime, I gather my pillow from our bed, walk to the front of the house, enter the bedroom, close the door behind me (to keep the cat out), and go to bed.

I sleep like the dead.

And, every morning, I wake to this sense of the familiar. Something my memory reaches for but cannot quite touch. What is it?

Then, one recent morning it hit me. As I wake, I breathe in deeply, and within that breath, I am first struck with the tickle of memory. Then, as I open my eyes to the light skipping past the blinds and sheers, I am struck with it again. What is this feeling I cannot shake?

I rolled onto my back fully and stared at the room. The chest of drawers next to me had belonged to my father. The old rocking chair, which dates back to my maternal great-great-grandparents, had been in my childhood home, a home my brother had lived in until his death in 2019. At that time, I brought it here. The small table at the end of the bed had belonged to my paternal great-grandmother and had also been in my childhood home. As had other pieces of furniture and a stack of quilts. All brought from my childhood home to my current home in 2019.

I turned my face to the bay window. To the sunshine inching in, remembering. My childhood bedroom, located in the front of the house, had windows that also faced east. Each morning, the sun found my room first as it slipped around blinds and sheers, bidding me to welcome the day.

The furniture, you see, has kept the scent of my childhood home. That feeling of waking up with the early morning sunshine illuminating my little corner of the world . . . well, I realized, that’s well-tucked into my memory where it will also dwell.

So, for me, as long as I sleep in the front bedroom of my current home (and it won’t be forever, I assure you–the cat has learned not to bother my husband until 6:00 a.m., he says, and my arm is getting much better), I will wake to the memory of my childhood. Mornings of blissful innocence. Summer mornings of sleeping in and stretching beneath sunflower-laced bedcovers. Fall mornings of hearing my father rap on my bedroom door singing, “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine” so as to rouse me from sleep so I could get ready for school. Mornings of the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, fried bacon and eggs, and homemade grits wafting down the hallway. Winter mornings of counting the days until Christmas and, then, spring. Spring mornings of Mother’s blooming gardenias sending their sweet scent into the opened windows.

Once I leave the front bedroom of my current home and return to the master bedroom suite, I may decide to visit every so often. Not because of the cat and not because of my arm, but because, for me, there are few memories so precious to me as that of waking up to my childhood.