I was putting things away in the guest room in our home today, when I was struck by how nothing has changed in the room since we redecorated it over 10 years ago. It had been my step daughter’s room, pink walls and white wicker furniture, but when she reached her late teens we decided it was time for a change. We wallpapered and bought new linens, a dresser that had been my mother’s as a child was given to me by my Aunt. A picture hangs on the wall that had been given to my mother by her Aunt when she was a child, an inscription on the back dated 1937. It is a comfortable room, with windows that face the front street.

My nieces have come every Thanksgiving weekend to stay with us for the past 8 years, and stay in this room. I wondered if they feel as I did when I was a child and visited my grandparents home in the country every summer. The room I shared with my sister for two weeks was always the same as we had left it every year before. The twin beds with the heavy bedspreads in shades of blue and purple like the hydrangeas that lined the driveway, in place on the beds. The framed needlepoint pictures above the beds that my Aunt had made. The delft lamp on the night table between the beds. (which now has found its place in my bedroom) There was such comfort in returning to that unchanged room, familiar and waiting for us. I wondered if my nieces felt that way every year upon returning, feeling the same comfort and familiarity in entering “their” room, untouched, unchanged. Or do they wonder and find it odd that things are exactly as they left them the year before?

Perhaps it was the feeling of security returning to the familiar that I embraced as a child, knowing that even though the world around me changed everyday, school and friends, throughout the year, the bedroom and even all the rooms in my grandparent’s home remained the same. I knew I could walk in and not have to navigate anything new, figure out where I belonged, it was all as I had left it. I am only struck by this now, with the comparison of my niece’s experience with me. Age has allowed me to reflect and look back, and smile at the thought of all those summers and the joy of returning to the all familiar once again.