Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Blog Chain: The Spaces we Remember

This Blog Chain post was started by Jon, who asked...

Imagine the home(s) where you grew up, and start drawing a floor plan. As you draw, memories will surface. Grab onto one of those memories and tell us a story.

You see, the thing is, we moved around a lot when I was a kid. Like, every three years. So my homes were always different, but somehow, always the same. Army housing all starts to look alike after a while. But the school I went to when I lived in Germany was an old building with a ton of twists and turns and a huge, romantic library. A building that always pops up in my imagination when I'm reading, and sometimes when I'm writing. Its halls have doubled for Hogwarts, stood in for myriad halls and castles from Elizabethan England to Middle Earth.
 
Halloween was the best, when the teachers and parents would create a haunted house that sprawled throughout the library and down a high-ceilinged hall. My mother and I were both vampires on the year that most colors my memories. Somehow cheap polyester spiderwebs and black plastic had transformed my school into an unrecognizable house of horrors, with scary music and floating wisps of smoke. I held my mother's hand tighter, despite how strange it felt in the white gloves she was wearing. Bats, rats, snakes, all closed in around us.

Something moved in the shadows and something huge and black lunged toward us. A man with a white face and a shiny black cape. I screamed, and hid my face in my mothers arms and she laughed and told me not to be afraid. Then she carried me all the way through the haunted house and no one else bothered us. I thought she was invincible, and nothing could harm her. I was six. ;)

See what space Christine posted about before me, and what Margie posts next!

5 comments:

Sandra Ulbrich Almazan said...

It's amazing how much impact Halloween has on kids. I think my four-year-old son likes Halloween as much as Christmas, maybe even more so. I know I have some vivid memories of Halloween as a child too. Thanks for sharing your memory with us!

Krispy said...

Aww, what a cute story. That school also sounds awesome.

Talli Roland said...

No way would I be going into a haunted hours when I was six, Halloween or not! :) Cute story.

Michelle H. said...

Love this post. You have such wonderful memories of the library, even when it sometimes was a scary, place.

Abby Annis said...

What an awesome memory! I'd love to visit Germany someday. That library sounds amazing!

I lived in the same house from the time I was five until I was old enough to move out and I always dreamed of moving somewhere exotic and having new adventures. Idaho was as far as I got. ;)