No Room of One's Own...Yet

Tonight I put my two daughters to sleep...in the same room. Although "the two daughters" part of that sentence still gives me pause (that's my parents, not me!), the part of the sentence I am going to focus on here is the "in the same room."

Alison and I never shared a bedroom, not really. In our first house, where we lived until I was seven, my parents converted a little nook off the kitchen maybe meant to be a pantry or a laundry room into a bedroom for Alison. My room, which had pink walls, and the little desk my grandfather made, and a big closet, was probably big enough for both of us, as I remember it, but for some reason this never happened. I don't remember it ever being discussed.

And when we moved to the house my parents still live in today, we were allowed to choose our own bedrooms. I am not sure how this happened, as at that time if we were presented with two identical pistachio nuts we would have managed to fight over which had a smoother shell, but perhaps we were each subtly directed toward the room that my parents had already decided would be ours, and somehow the strategy worked. Regardless, we each had our own, and over time it became clear that we had chosen--or been chosen for--well. My room was so perfectly mine, with its long bookshelf in the closet and the window that looked out over the field, and Alison's, with the big walk-in closet and room enough for a pink velvet chair, so perfectly hers.

Occasionally, we used to sleep in Alison' closet, in sleeping bags, but more than that I remember being so grateful for my own room, my own space, a door that I could shut when I needed to. I remember that bedroom, and even my first bedroom, as a sanctuary. Which is why it seems funny that I was so desperate to get Annika into Lily's, and so surprised that Lily jumped so enthusiastically onboard. In fact, when she tiptoed into the room during Annika's nap to get something, and I told her that if she wouldn't let Annika sleep I would have to take out the crib, she wailed, "Nooooo, Mama! You can't take Annika away from our bedroom!" Hmmm.

Now granted, Lily is 4 1/2, and once in her crib, Annika can't really get out and, say, "borrow" her favorite earrings to wear to the seventh grade formal or take the last piece of gum from the "secret" candy box on her bureau. Lily only very occasional craves privacy, and even on those occasions, largely for show, it is for a matter of moments. This, can be easily arranged. And Annika is years too young to realize that not much more than the diapers in this shared room are actually hers, and to desire her own things, let alone four walls enclosing a space that is hers in which to store and arrange them.

I am thinking of this as an experiment in sisterhood, to be honest. So far, report from Day One: Total success.