1970’s white shag carpet in piano room, teardrop chandelier in dining ironic because we are not chandelier people, although my Mucka could make that piano sing. Brady Bunch den, only one story, stone, exposed brick, lots of windows and one long, dark hallway. Born 1976, Halloween night, I discovered her beautiful carpet held a multitude of sins, dust mites, and pet dander– Mucka covered it with wall-to-wall plastic to protect “me.”

Shag’s scent– wool and dust, thick plastic– a faintly new “car” smell– created a crackly path to that ominous hallway with a powder blue bathroom at the end, all other doors remained closed as per Mucka’s instructions. However, as children are wont to do, I sometimes opened my absent Aunt Jojo’s door to let the sunshine sneak out creating a hurdle to jump. Taking off at the kitchen I blazed down the hallway and– as gracefully as a four-year-old could– leaped over the daylight on legs extended in full grand jete! My Mucka hollering from the den that I was going to shatter the Hummels because my vaults were shaking the chandelier and she knew what I was up to. I could hear her waggling finger from two rooms away, but that didn’t mean compliance. Which is why I got to sit stuck to the plastic on that lovely sofa in the piano room admiring the sunlight streaming through the picture window and wondering where shag carpet came from.

As I settled into more subdued adulthood, that rebellious joy subsided into concern. The plastic long since gone (the Hummels too–zero survived my younger sisters and cousins with their own olympics) The gloom of the corridor no less daunting but for different reasons. The air went from Hawaiian Tropic and Aquanet to alcohol swabs, urine leaks, disillusionment.

Mucka’s ghost still lingers, rattling that chandelier and Papa– who’s 93. They could make each other laugh but their silent battles had casualities and that somber passage delved deeper into the shadows than I could envision as a child.

Now, I want all the doors open!