Upstairs

Linda doesn’t snore, but she has a snore room on the opposite corner of the house in case anyone else does. Apparently nobody snored last night, because she was still in bed asleep when I awoke just now. Heading downstairs for coffee, I stopped on the way and crawled into her snore room bed, thinking not to disturb her by creaking the stairs and not to disturb Joe, whose bedroom is near the kitchen.

When Kristen was little, this was her room, with twin beds, and she and I slept in here. In the wee hours one night some years ago, I woke to the sound of driving rain, and constant lightning and thunder without intervals approaching from the west. Thinking “tornado,” I grabbed Kristen and ran downstairs to an agreed and designated “safe room” in the center of the house. It turned out to be a straight-line storm, quite violent, that drove a path about a mile wide as I recall, and caused substantial damage around town.

Built by my father's parents in 1912-13 for a family with five children, this house has been changed since then. Originally there were two bedrooms upstairs on the east side, and on the west side a large open room with a pool table. During WW2 the upstairs was converted to two apartments, each with kitchen, bedroom and bath; and a shared back hall opening onto outside metal stairs, which we call the fire escape. December 1962 we were home on Navy leave, and my father and I took out partitions, but it seems to me the upstairs kitchens were still here at the time, sinks, cabinets, gas hookups for stoves, linoleum floors.

Downstairs has been added to, but not changed. The Massalina Drive house where I grew up had fourteen steps in the enclosed staircase, this house has eighteen steps, open bannister stairway down into the dining room.

Our bedroom was Alfred’s room in the nineteen-teens. It opens onto the upstairs front porch, which is screened now but originally was open. One warm summer night forty-five years ago we were home on Navy leave and sleeping in that room. No air-conditioning, and the windows and screen door were open. I got out of bed and walked out onto the upstairs porch, asleep and dreaming. My dream was that we were on a river steamboat that had just run aground on the riverbank. I leaned over the railing looking at the riverbank and decided to jump off the boat onto the bank, waking up while still leaning over the railing.

T in +Time