Have you switched off your screens and are ready to ponder and/or discuss another prompt from my friend, author Tyrean Martinson’s book A Pocket Sized Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts? I have lived in quite a few different homes with a number of floors to the houses. But it is the term “attic” that resonates only with the first home I remember, my earliest childhood home.
It was an apartment complex with six apartments per triplex building, a cellar, and an attic. I loved the attic with its woodsy, dry smell although it was off-limits for us kids. You needed a key to get in there, and it held clotheslines spanned from one side to the other, an alternative to the outside one if the weather was bad. The cellar held storage rooms for every apartment and individual coal cellars. I still remember the bitter, metallic fragrance of the latter.
But this is not about the attic OR the basement – it’s what is in between. Home to me was the left half of the top floor. Our neighbors across from the connecting landing was an elderly couple, very friendly and kind. They moved out when I was around four and were replaced by a very fashionable, elderly lady with a black poodle. For a while, she had a French au-pair, Mademoiselle Hélène, as my mother called her. I guess my mother invited the girl over to make her feel a bit less homesick. Mademoiselle Hélène had probably just graduated from school, but to me she seemed very grown up, and she spoke French with my mother. So, I never connected with her, but afternoons with her at our home were special, as we had coffee and cake or pretzels when she came over.
One floor below, there were two families with a girl and a boy each when we moved in. The family directly below soon moved out, and an elderly, quite unfriendly couple moved in. They didn’t like children particularly, and I always tiptoed past their door. Sometimes I was invited to visit with the kids from that floor, across from them. I vividly remember their washer in the kitchen – none of us had a TV set back in the day, and the whirling colors behind the front loader’s door were fascinating to me. My mother’s washer was a top loader – nothing exciting about that.
There were two seemingly ancient couples on the first floor. One was very, very quiet and rarely to be seen. But, oh, the woman of the other one! As soon as the old lady behind the door heard children’s feet patter in the stairwell, her door opened, and we were beckoned to step inside to get our pockets stuffed with candy. My mother limited candy to one or two pieces a day for my brother and me. Here was abundance! I remember that sometimes an entire drove of kids went to her door and rang the bell to ask for candy. I was taught not to join them; it was not done to beg for candy. But I still got my share. And one time when I fell down the stairs, that sugar plum fairy took me in, consoled me, patched me up with a Band Aid, and loaded me with candy.
Between attic and basement, there was a microcosm of the outside world. The only difference was that it was a safe haven. We knew we could trust any of these people. It was what one would call an intact world with barely a hiccup. Just like my very last apartment building where I lived in Germany. But that is a different story, and one that lacks an attic.
