In our home, there is a family room and a study. They are the same room, for we do not have the luxury of space. The identity of the room changes with the action of its occupants or the time of day. Late at night and during the quiet of nap-time, it is the study. However, when the day begins, when our children are balls of energy set to ignite and burn into every corner of our small home, this single room with two selves is our family room. The family room fast becomes a room seemingly shattered. Strewn about are books, children’s books pilled upon heavy reference books, the ones that line the bottom shelf of the bookcases anchoring them down against the weight of little-uns whose mischief urges them not only outward into everything, but upward on top of everything.
In the family room, the children’s things are everywhere—trailing into the kitchen, the bedroom and back again. There are toys littered about, toys which move of their own accord, toys which sing songs that slip into your head and stay there, keeping you hostage to their childish melodies. The family room is a place possessed with singing, talking, laughing…It is a room that takes the full force of hard play. Any attempt at cleanliness and order is futile, for in the times of wakefulness, the children own the family room; they commandeer it as their ship and set it to sail on the sea of their imaginations.
These days it is only while the babies sleep that this room reinvents itself into the beloved study. As a study, the room is a place wherein toys are tucked away. Although still full of books, they are neatly filed upon the shelves. Their bold bridges glare from the bookcases that lean against the walls, a fantastic loitering of characters, plots and musings. The study is a-buzz with the electricity of Women’s literature, Black literature, Chicano and Native American literature, with the neon glow of Poetry and Sacred texts. There are no seemingly innocuous objects strewn around, ready to strike; there is room to walk, to pace, to create. In the study there is the sound of a favorite album worn thin with faithful play, there is the click of the computer keys, and the soft sound of pages turning like leaves from bough to pavement. In this study, moments ago alive with the bounding energy of children and their make-believe, there is the lilting hum of adult conversation, discussion of the world and one’s place with in it. It is a room that smolders in the hot coals of writing, thinking and being.
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