Write about a memory – start with I remember…

I remember looking out the window of the attic bedroom that my sister and I shared when we were young. On rainy nights, the lights from the Dunkin Donuts on Main Street ran into a river of lavender down our deserted side street. The neon reflections merged into a magical color that to this day I still associate with imagination.

As I said, my sister and I shared this room, or whatever it is you call it when you fight over everything. It was a wonderfully large room of pink and white gingham checks. A room created from an unused attic out of necessity when my grandfather appeared on our doorstep one day, having had a fight with my mother’s half sister.

Since our 3 bedroom rental already overflowed with our family – my widowed mother and 5 children – we pushed upwards into that space in a house that can be both fascinating and scary. Pink and white gingham were balanced with small doors in the eaves that gave access to the attic in the other side of the old duplex.

You arrived in our attic bedroom by taking a long set of dark stairs, where the light could only be turned on once you reached the top of the stairs. Going up those stairs at night, at times it may have been better to not have enough imagination to see a river of light as magical; because you can imagine things to fear as easily as you can imagine magic.