LOFTS
You can be imprisoned when there are no walls.
You can be free in a confined space.
My loft is only 6’ by 8’. The dogs can’t get to me, and very few people are interested in scaling the ladder. The loft is furnished with an old rocker from my dad’s garage, a railroad chair from my father-in-law’s depot in Billings, Montana, and a stack of thesauri.
The hooked rug is a portrait of my old dog, Obe (named for Old Blue Eyes.) Tacked on the wall is a birthday card I received from a neighbor who had no children, who loved to brush my long red hair. It says, “To my favorite 5-year-old on her birthday.” And lying along a beam is a pair of stilts my dad made in 1952 by chopping down two trees and nailing wooden triangles on them. I could walk all the way down the road to my aunt’s house on those stilts. I could do it really fast when my mother was beating a slice of liver into submission and calling it supper.
From the loft, I can look down through the shadows and shafts of sunlight in our house, through the angles of railings and beams. I can see across the meadow and pond, beyond the fields to the Black Diamond Road on the horizon.
The loft is wonderful for writing, wondering, or worrying. It’s the best place for composing a song, reading, or avoiding all of the above.
Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen at an altitude of 30-feet that helps one relax. Maybe it’s pretending you can’t hear the phone or the washer screaming that it’s finished its cycle.
Grownups who hide in the woodpile or make a clubhouse in the closet might gain a certain reputation. But call it a loft, and it’s okee-dokee, even here in Iowa County, Iowa.
Just don’t be playing any loud music up there during hunting season. (See post for February 10th.)
