Wandering the Hallways

Wandering the Hallways

I don’t remember the story clearly. I do have a faint memory of the storybook's cover. A picture of a long hallway on the second floor of an old mansion. How do I know it was the second floor? An intuition? A vague remembrance of the story inside those probably now mouldy covers of a book that may only exist in my memory? I just know that it was a second floor hallway over looking a vast lawn, bush and trees texturing the landscape on a sunny day. Sun streaming in tall windows. Gauzy curtains made yellow by the brilliant sun hung limply waiting for a breeze to bring them to life. At the end of the hallway was a cupboard ~ an old wooden cupboard with frescoes and curlicues carved deeply in old polished wood all atop and down the sides. Two children advanced toward the cupboard, their antique dress placing them in a time long past. The girl wore a long dress, as blue as the top of the sky, with a fine lace collar and puffed lace edge sleeves. Her blond hair hung fine, straight and glossy, held back with a blue satin ribbon. She reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. The boy wore a loose white shirt with pants that banded at the knee; long white stockings encased his young legs. He too had blond hair, but it capped his head in a mass of unruly curls. 

Just what was in that old wooden cupboard at the end of the hallway? The door to the cupboard sat ajar - just enough to show that it was probably empty….rather like the black hole of my memory for the story that was…….If I could just reach into that image and open the cupboard door. I could even hear it creak. The story book must have been a gift. I would have been a young child when I held it in my hands, turning printed pages smelling of paper and ink when the book was new. The old rocking chair creaked back and forth on the broad porch, birds twittered and visited in the brambles and blackberries, a train whistle echoed in the distance. Closing my eyes, I smiled at all the enchanting words and phrases penned and printed so long ago. The whole story had not really been forgotten. Time had tucked it safely away in the long, and often mysterious, hallway of my memory

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne