The built-in robe in the spare room at my father’s house is for storage. When Dad and his wife, my stepmother, first moved into their newly-built house in coastal Victoria, everything was dumped in that cupboard — and in wooden sideboards in the dining room and living room, and anywhere else with closable doors.
Dad and his wife were downsizing. A large, sprawling farm house full of wall art, ornaments, glassware and cutlery had to fit into their newly-built house. My stepmother was in hospital when they moved and it was all too much for Dad. So, one of my stepmother’s daughters oversaw the last stages of the build and the unpacking by a company called ‘The Moving Angels’ and I did the rest.
Paintings and pictures were put in the spare room wardrobe with the plan to put them on the walls at some stage, but that never happened. Twelve years after moving in, the larger pictures are still stacked on the floor, smaller ones on the shelves. Some are wrapped in brown paper. My stepmother would have wanted them on the walls but she never got to live in their new house. She came home for a week or so from hospital before being re-admitted and never came home. After that, Dad didn’t have much motivation for decorating the house. And I didn’t want to pressure him.
Over the years we put up a few pictures. One is a large aerial photo of the farm Dad and my stepmother lived on before they moved. It has a dark green matboard and a wooden frame. There’s a thin white border cut into the green but the corners of the border don’t quite meet in one corner. It annoys me every time I look at it. Can only see it if you go up close, but I know it’s there. A few framed sketches are in the hallway and Dad’s study — some of Dad’s favourites from South America — and some etched copper plates that seem to tarnish a week after being polished.
As well as the pictures and paintings in the wardrobe, there are photos. Some in frames, others in albums or shoe boxes. There’s also a white polystyrene box full of Dad’s ornaments that don’t really fit anywhere else. A few stray ornamental owls from his collection, a Peruvian whistle, artefacts from around the world. And boxes and boxes of slides. That’s just Dad’s stuff. Then there are some of my stepmother’s family photos. A couple of her daughters came and got most of the family albums a couple of years ago. They asked Dad if they could take the photos before they came over — they’re very good about things like that — but after they left Dad was very upset. Said it was just another bit of my stepmother that was being taken away.
On the top shelf of the wardrobe is some of my stuff. Things that are too precious to be in a plastic storage box in Dad’s garage. Or things I thought I might want to easily access. Although I’ve lived out of home since I was seventeen, I’ve always lived in share houses. And in share houses, you don’t have much space for bits and pieces. That’s where a family home has come in handy.
An old laptop, a CD player and my university graduation certificate in a red cylindrical holder. There’s a shoe box labelled ‘Special Box’ filled with my special things. U2 concert tickets, birthday cards I’ve received over the years with particularly touching or funny messages. A poem from a boyfriend I had before I knew what love was. A small tin numberplate with my name on it which my friends gave me as a goodbye present when I moved interstate. It’s fourteen years old.
There’s another shoe box, labelled ‘Programmes’ from back in the day when I used to buy the shiny booklets at every production I saw. Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, Singing in the Rain, Chicago, Bell Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Sometimes the programmes were purely for practical purposes. I got into writing performing arts reviews after my university drama teacher, the head of the Theatre and Drama department, gave me back my assignment and said he’d pay to read my theatre criticism. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. I’d never been really good at anything. But, given that he was a prolific theatre critic, author, academic, and had been on the theatre scene for nearly fifty years, I thought I’d give it a go. I ended up writing for an online arts publication for a number of years. Never did get paid, but I got a lot of free tickets and even free wine. There’s a stack of paper pamphlets from fringe theatre productions in the shoe box as well. The cast and production list was important, and sometimes, depending on how obscure the play had been, the synopsis too. So many late nights spent trying to think of something intelligent to say. I stopped collecting programmes when the Internet became more readily available. Everything I needed to know was online. And free.
On top of the box of programmes are my photo albums, and stacks of printed holiday photos that I never did anything with. A plastic bag of candles is also squeezed onto the shelf. Sometimes the contents of the bag shift, fall a little over the edge of the shelf and stop the wardrobe doors from sliding easily. I have lots of candles, from when I used to work at a candle shop about fifteen years ago. I can still recount the candle burning mantra we had to tell every customer who purchased a candle: “Now, trim the wick to about 6mm each time before burning the candle. This will prevent black smoke from forming.” I can also tell you about candle memories and how to form them, but I’ll leave that for another time.
On the left of the wardrobe, there is still some hanging space. But anything longer than a t-shirt will have to drape over the framed pictures stacked below. There are still a couple of my step-mother’s jackets, Mum’s fur shawl. My old terry towelling dressing gown is hanging too. Sky blue with brown splodges around the neckline and shoulders. The faint smell of fake tan. I used to wear the gown after applying bronzing cream to my skin and while I dyed my own hair. Still remember the hair dye packets and trying to fit my hands into the clear plastic gloves which would have fit well if I’d had webbed hands. After applying the dye, I’d clip my hair up with a plastic butterfly clip while waiting for the colour to process. Wet, dye-laden chunks of hair would always escape the clip and fall onto the gown. Too much hair. Semi-permanent, medium brown was my colour in my late teens and again late in my twenties, until I accidentally bought a permanent kit. Ended up with matt black tresses for a year while it grew out.
The lack of space for clothes isn’t a big problem. No one really stays in that room. Well, no one who’d be bothered by the clutter. My aunt and uncle have stayed there for a couple of weeks at a time when they’ve travelled down from Queensland. My brother stays in that room when he comes down from up north. That’s when I sleep on a foam mattress in Dad’s study. But my brother’s only here for maybe three or four weeks a year and he doesn’t hang things. He’s used to living out of bags. Travels a lot for work. I use that room more than anyone. In fact, I recently used it for a year. But my stuff could hang on one side. Because of Covid restrictions and caring for my father, I didn’t leave the house much. Didn’t need more than some leggings and tees. To be honest, the clutter probably annoyed me more than anyone else, but I didn’t have the time or energy to do anything about it.
I still stay for a few days at a time in that spare room, so I can visit my father where he now lives — in a nearby aged care facility. When I bring him back to his house for a visit, hopefully soon, he and I will go through that wardrobe. Perhaps he can choose some pictures to put on his new walls. After more than a decade of gathering dust in a wardrobe, his pictures may finally be on display.
