“Our house,” my little sister whispers loudly, “has a secret attic.”
The three of us stand in front of our sweeping carpet stairs. Allie’s six-year old eyes, wide with glee, glance back and forth (and up and down) between Brookie Giese and I as her mouth dramatically slides into the grin of a gremlin. Bits of cookies speckle her lips and a teasing flurry of mischief flits under her face, pleased with the awesomeness of her revelation.
“We’ve got a secret attic!” I echo Allie—as I always do, despite my two and a half years of seniority—relishing the shiver in my fingers. “You can see it through a tiny door in the back of my dad’s closet. But you have to promise not to tell anyone. Or else it won’t be a secret anymore.”
“Yeah! Come on, Hannah and I will show you.”
Brookie follows ecstatically. She is my age, my best friend, and since our parents have been friends since forever, we will be too. We were born in the same hospital, twenty-six days apart. It’s a fun fact to tell. Brookie, Hannah: Brannah. Friends forever.
Our feet create a cacophony as we race up the stairs towards the attic, two steps at a time. All of us, scrambling towards our secret… Allie bouncing, me tripping and laughing every other step, and Brookie trailing quietly, confidently.
“Unfair.” A giggle escapes as I stumble for the hundredth time. “This is our house. Why, Ms. Brooke Giese, should a foreign dancer be able to conquer the Great Steps better than me?”
Brookie smirks. “The Great Pyramids of Giza. Obviously, it was designed for me.”
I sigh playfully as we continue to traverse. Turning the corner, we burst into our parents room. I thrust open the closet, push aside the hanging clothes and slowly creak the tiny door open.
Our attic—the subtle, not-so-secret secret that my sister and I tell in the sparks of our childhood play, whispers of fantasy and pride and childish wonder…
—
The room itself could hardly be called an attic. It is an old, narrow second-story loft space, the size of a small kitchen. The roof is slanted, meeting the floor like a wall, and the interior boasts only of unfinished, musty wood slabs that have yet to see ventilation or paint. I have only peered in twice through the tiny juniper door at the back of my parents’ closet, drinking in the mauve dust with all of its glory.
But it was a glorious thing to us—a treasure, a prize. Its untouchable space, though useless for our boisterous hide and seek, became a silent wonder, and we relished it.
—
I have not thought about the secret attic for many months. As the moths that gnaw on what rots find their way into my memories, the thrill of these temporal spaces has and will continue to fade. The attic entered our minds only in passing moments, and it has since been lost in that season of half-my-lifetime ago.
Only now do I realize that it was never about the shabby (and empty) space itself, which I beheld as glorious and otherworldly. Many other things have taken its throne, and each has faded, and will fade. Pieces of jewelry. The ticket to New York. My seaside painting. College.
They are, in themselves, simply objects of momentary brilliance and ephemeral thrill, coming and going (appropriately) with the changing seasons of life. Brooke has her own world now, and I can only glimpse it from a friendly distance. How many times have I stared at old photos and wondered what still lingers in us from those memories? …how are you, Brooke?
(good, hbu?)
But what lies beneath all the fleeting glories of our failing, mortal, childish treasures—in our secret attic, and all the wonder it stood for—is a yearning for something grander. It is the hope that manifests itself while we watch fireworks weave a distant tapestry. It is the hunger that dusts the room in shadows as we stare at the nighttime ceiling, and the longing when grief reminds us that this broken world is not our home. In the thrill of all our attics is a yearning and longing for a greater country, where moths and vermin do not destroy, where thieves do not break in or steal and where the God who made our hearts is calling us by name.
So I will treasure these memories as I wait for that future day; that day when our joy will be made complete, and I will step past the tainted threshold—past the dusty attic—and truly, finally, be home.
