Slow Goodbyes: The Room That's Seen it All

As I write these goodbyes to our home, I'm amazed at how many rich and full memories can be packed into rooms that in the grand scheme of rooms, are not all that big.

Today's room may win the prize for most functions. Technically it's a bedroom, but I think it's seen as much {maybe more!} life as another kind of room as it has a bedroom. {Including right now!}

The room isn't huge, but it still boasts its original hardwood floors and has a surprisingly nice-sized closet for being in a house that was built before closets were really a thing. And my mother's favorite part about this room is her birth. Right within these four now-yellow walls, she came into the world and took her first breath. My aunt probably did too. Life actually began in this room and much life has been lived in it since.

My grandparents used it as their bedroom much of the time, and I remember watching Grandma tug at the rolled blinds each morning until they scurried up and let the light flow in for the day. Back then it had royal blue carpet and an accordion door that never quite wanted to stay shut like it should.

By the time my sister bought this house in 2000, the room had been given quite an overhaul. Melissa, who lived here between Grandma's death and our repurchase of the home, had pulled up the royal blue carpet and refinished the gorgeous hardwoods underneath. She'd painted the walls a classy forest green and hung sheer curtains at the windows. I think she used the room as kind of a little study area, and the accordion door had long been removed.

I had two roommates in my early years here, and it was the room each of them used as their bedroom. When Angela moved out in 2004, I decided to make it my bedroom. The forest green walls felt a bit like they were closing in on me, so armed with a can of bright yellow paint I acquired free of charge from a friend at church, I painted those walls, and the room remains that cheery yellow to this day.

In the last twelve years, the room has rotated through a variety of functions. As I said, it started as my bedroom, and it was the last room in which I slept on the twin half-a-bunk I'd brought with me from my parents' house. When I moved into a different room, I transitioned this into my office and craft room, and I wrote a lot of articles, blogs, journal entries, Bible studies, and even my first book right in this very room. I made hundreds of cards and scrapbooked my single life and invited friends over to join me in crafting. For a short while, this was a guest room of sorts, with an air mattress that possessed a stubborn hole that refused to stay patched. And Ryan and I used it as a sitting room, too, when we had two sets of living room furniture and needed a place to put one. Most recently, it was our dining room, and we not only ate some of our own meals in there, but we invited friends over to gather around our tall, square table and enjoy the smallest kinds of feasts.

As we prepare to leave, the latest function of this room is our home gym. This is the room where we meet each day to sweat it out on the floor mats covering the hardwoods. This is where we dab our wet faces with towels and slurp water on ten second breaks before resuming the jumping and punching. This is the room where we fall to the floor thirty minutes later, exhausted and relieved that the workout is over. It's been a good purpose for this room, although we occasionally crash into the pile of boxes waiting in the corner, boxes on deck to be packed.

{Sorry for the poor photo quality. It goes along with our current state.}

Our new home will have a "home gym" as well, and while I plan to change the color away from yellow, I've been mentally decorating, excited to see how it comes together to inspire us to keep working out.

A little room with about eight million times more memories than size. I've asked much of this room and it has delivered everything required - starting with my mother's life.