The floor was brown. Not solid brown. In my mind's eye, I'm looking down at it now and I see speckles and confetti-like patterns of brown and black and red and a few gold splashes here and there. It's cold and cut in large square tiles. Outside the wind howls. It's late October and I'm trying to think of a cool Halloween Costume for the different parties I'll be going to this year. I am 10. I hang my coat on a hanger inside the door - the pale blue bricks make a walk-in closet just across from the quadruple doors. I don't really want to leave it there yet. My arms are cold and I still feel the chill from the walk to the church. I know I will be sitting on cold grey folding chairs, too There is a smell, too. Something uniquely this place - something that will stick with me throughout my whole life - through the Baccalaureate service for my high school graduate that will be held here, just down the hall in the sanctuary, and through to my suddenly remembering it in a fugue state at age 38. It reminds me of the kitchen in my elementary school, but it also smacks of a certain amount of disuse and dust.
I hear other girls milling, their voices echoing in the large room. Stage at one end, fronted by the children's toys from the day care that runs here during the day, this is where banquets and bridgings happen. At one end, girls are running around and sliding on the slick, dark floor. A circle of those cold folding chairs is set up nearer to the stage. To one side, the adult ladies are talking and looking at books and pulling things out of plastic bags, preparing for the meeting to begin. The meeting, which seemed so long to me then, will only take an hour and a half.
Most of all, there is a feeling of safety this place gives me. A feeling of belonging and love and trust that will disappear later in my life. For now, this place feels almost as much home as my family home half a mile away. In warm weather, I climbed the tree with the almost 90 degree angled branch in the parking lot. If I look out the window, I can see it there, appearing almost on its own island of grass.
I can smell the powdered soap in the bathroom down the hall. A tiny little room with two squeaky stall doors that never seemed to line up with their locks, it smelled of borax-like powdered soap and urine. My mind strains to remember a faint memory of a 70s-style orange vinyl couch from that room, but I don't know where that would have fit. The mind is an imperfect thing and these memories are arriving through emotion. That couch will have to float there, Schrodinger's Cat - like, neither existing nor not existing.
Brownies, and Girl Scouts in my later elementary years, is filled with memories of this place. There was singing "Silver and Gold" and playing "Gossip"to prove messages can be misunderstood. One shining memory was the night Lilly Umholtz taught us how to properly set a table. Why I found that so interesting I no longer know. Perhaps because I was a loud sponge soaking up any and all knowledge.
Despite her volume, I would love to be that girl again. She was opinionated and annoying, but she had brass. She was unashamedly curious and planned to take on the world someday. She saw nothing but promise in her future and believed she could do anything.
A small bit of that girl still resides in me - she's the part that wants to ride Camels and be a wise old woman. I recently let her loose to make a list of 101 things she wants to do. She came up with driving Route 66 and going on an "Amusement Park Crawl", as well as taking a painting class and learning to fly a plane.
Sometimes people forget that, trapped inside a sick woman, there exists a little girl who still wants to play, to run, to learn, to explore. I don't know if I'll ever get to do any of those things on that list. I'd like to think as long as I still have that list, though, I can have hope.
