A Faded Habit

My sister and I shared a bedroom for the first 12 years of our lives.  We had so much fun playing in our rooms together, and often we just did our own thing as Lizzie liked to say.  Regardless, we were together.  I remember when we moved into the Rockwell St. apartment that had 3 bedrooms.  Lizzie chose the room at the front of the apartment with a view of the neighborhood, and I took the middle room close to the entry door just off the dining room.  Interestingly, as I am composing this post, I realize she has always preferred a room with a view when given the choice … hmmm … childhood preferences carried into adulthood!  Anyway … in that first bedroom of her own, she had a desk in front of the window at which she sat and spent endless hours playing office and watching activity on the neighborhood street. I remember Mom going in and having to clean out the desk of all the papers she used to stuff in the drawers.  Now I am the one who assumes that task!  She kept that desk for 35 years until she moved in with us in 1995 at which time her view bedroom was very large, and we bought her a gigantic oak roll-top desk.  It has been until only very recently (within the last month) that she no longer sits at her desk and plays office, and I miss this soooo much!  I used to sometimes go in and just hang out with her to chat or watch TV as she sat and kept herself busy with either reading, writing, or just fiddling with whatever.  I don’t know if these days she has forgotten about this practice; if she has lost interest in it; or if she just prefers to go to bed much earlier than tradition.  What I certainly do recognize is the change in a pleasurable activity that has been a part of my sister’s routine for most of her life.