Writing Prompt #12

 

After years mostly dormant, I am attempting to work myself into being a writer again. To that end, I did a simple Google search for "writing prompts" and chose the first link listed, which included a total of 20 prompts. My goal is to write from a new prompt each day, giving myself 10 minutes before calling "hands up, utensils down" (so to speak), and then posting the unedited result in this blog. The post below is today's entry.

 

"Describe your favorite piece of furniture from your childhood home."

 

I was probably seven or eight years old when my dad bought a tall, backless bookcase. Calling it a “room divider,” he placed it perpendicular to the outside-adjacent wall of the living room of his house in Frayser, where our whole family lived before the divorce and where my brother and I stayed with him on most weekends for several years afterward.

 

And, sure enough, the simple placement of that one piece of furniture did effectively divide the room, setting off the dining area as its own separate space and making the now smaller living room cozier and more intimate. The bookcase was probably over six feet tall (or at least I remember its being taller than my 6’1’’ dad) and at least as wide, and it was deep enough to hold two rows of books on each of its three shelf levels so that one set of books could face the living room and another the dining room. Dad placed a small, cushioned chair and a lamp at the corner made by the bookcase and the wall on the living room side, creating a comfy reading nook. 

 

That corner was my sanctuary within the house, the one spot where I did not feel like I was away from home, but at home.