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When my daughters were young, their rooms were Laura Ashley, their dresses were smocked, and we were picture-perfect. As the girls grew older “or maybe as I grew wiser” I let go of the perfection thing. When we moved into the house we now live in, I let the girls pick their rooms. Colors? They could go any direction they pleased. They hung photos of friends everywhere and even taped poems to the walls.
This fall, we took our eldest daughter, Gillea, to college. We spent the last days of August packing five huge boxes with her wardrobe, cosmetics, a handful of photographs, and some books. After the last box was sealed, I looked up, and the room was still vibrating with Gillea’s life in photographs, trophies, ribbons, memories of dance and drill team, and dried roses from proms and homecomings. Her paper lanterns still hung from the ceiling fan. Her white carpet was stained with makeup and drippings from the omnipresent glue gun she used to make gifts for her friends.
As the editor of this magazine, I look at perfectly done rooms every day, and so I sometimes slip into the designer equivalent of political correctness. Correctness is always an occasion of dishonesty. Gillea’s room, by contrast, is passionately honest. Teenagers don’t practice design correctness. They don’t know (or care) that it might be overkill to cover the walls with photos of themselves and their friends. It doesn’t occur to them to put aside an ugly gift from a friend”no gift from a friend could be ugly. Their rooms are literal, breathtakingly honest projections of who they are, whom they love, and what they dream.
At college Gillea will doubtless be drilled in political correctness, and, when she gets older, she’ll be tempted by the world of picture-perfect. But as I sit on her stained carpet, packing her belongings for life’s journey, I hope she remembers who she was when she made this room of paper lanterns and posters and photographs of friends. I hope she remembers the days when she saved her roses and taped poems to the wall.
