Memories in the Attic

The attic was stuffy, and Lea could feel the dust in the air with every breath making her mouth dry and throat scratchy. “I really hope we aren’t breathing in asbestos.” 

“I told you we should’ve worn the face masks,” Lea’s cousin Carol turned, fixing Lea with an I-told-you-so look. 

“Yeah, you were right. I just needed to get out of that room.” The whole family was together downstairs dressed in black; the welcoming, loving atmosphere that Lea was used to being greeted with when she’d come to visit had been replaced with a cold disdain, bordering on anger.

She hadn’t been there for the final months, weeks, or days of her grandmother's life. Everyone except for her had been there. They were angry; she couldn’t blame them. From their perspective, it looked like she hadn’t cared enough to be there in person to help Grandma or to support everyone else who was hurting. 

“Whatever pit of negativity your brain’s going down right now, stop it.” Carol was looking at her, face stern but eyes compassionate. The one family member who wasn’t angry. Carol didn’t have to volunteer to help. She didn’t need to escape the crowded living room because of the whispers and angry glares, but she’d volunteered anyway.

“Let's just get to work - green sticky notes for stuff to be sold, red for trash, and blue for keep.” Lea tossed Carol the sticky note pads before turning to start on the box closest to her.

Peering at the boxes, Lea felt she was looking over the years of her grandparents' lives: the yard decorations they used to put up, the old cabinets and dressers that her aunt had convinced them to replace after one broke when Lea’s younger cousin’s arm had gone through the rotting wood. Afterwards, Lea, Berk, and Grandma had used the broken cabinet to prank Berk’s mom into thinking he’d tackled the thing. She nearly grounded him.

The cabinets would go; they weren’t worth anything, too degraded to be repaired. Lea put a red sticky note on each of them. The yard decorations were next. Her grandmother had enjoyed making the yard look like it belonged in a magazine. She picked out a few of the decorations, ones she knew her grandmother loved most, and put a blue sticky on them and greens on the rest. 

Lea noticed Carol had moved onto marking the old exercise equipment. It had been stored when they were little, because the two of them kept trying to use it like a playground. Lea had honestly thought her grandparents had thrown out half of the stuff she saw around her. Yet, here it was piled up in boxes, a lifetime of living all stored away in an attic. 

Sorting through the boxes was harder than going through decorations. The boxes were filled with random things, most meaning nothing, but occasionally she’d find a paper with an old drawing scribbled on it that one of the cousins had done for the grandparents or a photo taken just a few years ago that reminded her how much she'd missed by moving and a reminder of how it had been almost a whole year since she had seen her grandmother face-to-face. She’d FaceTimed her a handful of times and had talked on the phone, but she felt like she hadn’t done enough - like she should’ve said, “Forget this job,” and flown out. 

Lea wiped her eyes and pushed down the feeling in her chest. She wasn’t going to break down crying in the attic; they already thought less of her for her absence. They’d think even less if she didn't finish doing this, so she kept on sorting.  

Around an hour later, Carol stood up, stretched her back, and called over to Lea, “I’m going to go ahead and call the twins up to help us take boxes down. I don’t think I can get to the back ones unless we get some of these out.”

“What? We can get this out on our own!” Lea nearly shouted to Carol. She wasn’t eager to deal with the twins and didn’t want to endure their judging gazes and accusing questions. Of all the members of their family, the twins had been the most vocal in letting Lea know exactly how they felt about her. 

“Yes, we do! We don’t have enough hands to get these down safely without falling off the ladder!” Carol’s voice was exasperated. “Look, I’m not about to risk breaking my neck falling off a ladder, because you didn’t want to deal with the twins.”

Before Lea could say anything, Carol was shooting Berk a text to come up and help them. Carol and Lea moved the boxes they’d sorted and marked towards the attic hatch while they waited for the twins. As they moved one of the boxes, it revealed a well-kept plastic box labeled “Toys.” It was longer than the rest of the boxes. There were other boxes on top of it that had previously blocked them from seeing the labeled box.

“I thought that Grandma and Grandpa donated all the old toys once we outgrew them….” Lea scrunched her face in confusion.

“I thought so tooo... We’ll go through that one next.” Carol said, eyeing the box curiously.

“Do you think it’s our parents' old toys?” Lea inquired. 

Carol picked up the next box to move to the hatch. “It might be Christmas presents they forgot to give us and just put them in the box and forgot about them.”

“What presents?” Becket’s voice answered from the ladder below them before he stuck his head through the open hatch. 

“Beck, focus, just grab a box and let's move it.” Berk’s annoyed voice came from somewhere behind Becket. 

“We found a big box that said ‘Toys.’” Carol supplied, handing over one of the lighter boxes to Becket, who handed it to his brother below him. 

As Carol, Becket and Berk formed a chain passing boxes down, Lea made her way back over to the toy box. The boxes on top of it were surprisingly light. They probably had pillows or something like that in them; Lea just moved them to the side to get to the box underneath. Finally, able to open it, she hooked her fingers under one side of the box’s lid, popped it open, and pushed the lid off.

Inside the box were unrecognizable shapes, each encased in bubble wrap. She unwrapped the one on top to reveal a He-Man figure; she couldn't recall the character’s name, but she remembered that it belonged to her cousin Evan. He’d stopped playing with things like action figures a few months back saying they weren’t cool anymore.

Looking underneath, she began to recognize the distorted shapes, and she realized what the box contained. These were the grandkids’ favorite toys from over the years. Her grandparents had always kept toys around, specific ones they knew that the grandkids were into. Of course, each of them found a favorite toy of the bunch, one they played with the most when visiting. Lea had assumed that they had just been donated with the other toys as the grandkids outgrew them, but here they were sitting in this box, each of them carefully wrapped. She needed to bring the box down and unwrap each and every one of them until she found her own. She rewrapped the figure and put it back in the box before putting the lid back into place. 

Carol and the twins were nearly done moving their pile of boxes out the hatch as Lea pushed the long box over to them. “Uhh, Lea, whatcha doing with that?” Becket said spotting her first. 

Carol turned and gave Lea a confused look as she glanced between Lea and the box. Answering Becket, Lea said, “Taking it downstairs. The rest of the sorting can wait a little while.” 

There was a good chance the rest of her family wouldn't care about the box at all, and she would look like a crazy person, but she needed to see that old toy horse and the doll, the tangible reminders of those childhood years in her hands. She pushed the box up right to the edge of the attic hatch as Berk peaked his head around Becket to glare at her. 

“What did you find? A bunch of cash? Maybe some antiques for you to sell?” Berk’s voice dripped with hostility. He’d made it very clear just how he felt about her and her absence through the year. He had convinced himself and maybe some of the others that she had only come back in hopes of inheriting something worthwhile. The truth was she didn't even have enough vacation days at work to stick around for the reading of the will. She'd come back to say goodbye, because she knew how important it would’ve been to her grandmother for her to be there with the family at her funeral.

“Shut up, Berk. Just move. This thing is too long to pass down like the others.” Lea ignored Berk’s question; it would start a pointless argument. 

Carol helped Lea maneuver the box down through the hatch. They had to turn the box on its side to point up towards the ceiling to get through. Even with the toys wrapped up it, made Lea nervous to hear them sliding around as they moved the box. Becket, being his curious self, seemed happy to help bring the box down. After they'd descended the ladder, Lea and Becket moved the box through the house towards the living room. 

Berk and Carol silently followed behind them. Lea was glad that she was facing the door as they entered the room. The chatter in the room halted as the family noticed the group with the box. Becket guided Lea towards the empty center of the room to place the box down. She pointedly avoided looking around at her family; instead, she just took the box’s lid off. 

Lea looked at Carol for moral support as she spoke, not daring to turn around yet. “They're our old toys.” Her voice was steadier than she felt with anxiety building in her chest. She probably looked like an idiot to the rest of the room; maybe the box would actually mean nothing to the rest of them. “Not all of them, I mean they're our favorite toys or just the ones we'd always play with the most.” 

Lea glanced at Carol as she registered what it meant, and Lea made herself look over to Berk whose face had softened for once and now held a look of a bittersweet memory passing through his mind. Lea felt the fear that ruled her chest just moments ago disappearing. In that moment, she knew this had been the right move. She bent over and grabbed the He-Man figure and turned around to look for its owner, Evan. Upon spotting the boy, she took a few steps towards him and held out the toy in her hand. 

“It's that guy from He-Man that you played with so much,” Lea rambled. Evan’s hand darted out and grabbed the toy from her hand. He unwrapped it like it was a present. “Grandma must have put it in the attic just a few months ago.” 

“I thought they'd given it away.” Evan’s voice was soft and quiet, as he pulled the toy to his chest. Too old to play with toys he'd said; Lea could just imagine the smirk on Grandma’s face if she'd been there.

Younger cousins started gathering around the box, sifting through it to find their own toys. She watched as Becket, Berk, Carol, and the other older cousins began much more carefully poking through the box. Carol pulled out a little kids version of a karaoke machine. Berk pulled out a plastic case full of little toy cars. Becket pulled out a set of toy cowboy guns. Even the older cousins came forward to pull their toys out. 

Finally, Lea let herself step forward to look into the box. She had figured that most of the other toys would be gone once the grandkids had picked through them, but there were still more. She picked up one, vaguely the right shape, and started unwrapping it, hoping it was hers, but as she unwrapped it, she realized it was a G.I. Joe with a motorcycle, not the doll and horse she’d been looking for. 

From behind her, she heard Uncle Nate’s incredulous voice. “Is that what I think it is? That's mine. That’s almost as old as you.” When Lea looked at him, he was motioning to her mother. Lea held the toys out to her uncle, who took them with gentle hands and a specific type of joy on his face that she'd never seen before. 

“They kept our favorite toys, too,” Aunt Janelle said, with a soft voice, already looking into the box to find her own.

Lea watched as her mother and her other four siblings found their own childhood toys in the box. Every few moments, she'd hear some version of, “They held onto them all these years,” or “I remember begging Dad to let me buy this one,” and even “I thought I’d never see this again.” 

Lea’s mother turned around to motion for Lea to come closer. Lea had to remind herself to breathe; she felt as if even one wrong breath would shatter this feeling filling the room and send it back to the angry glances and cold shoulders she had been getting every other day that week. 

“Do you remember this?” Her mother held out her toy horse and doll, and Lea felt tears in her eyes as she grabbed them. Lea cradled them as if they might break if she held them too tightly.

“Of course. I convinced Grandma that I had to learn to sew, so that I could make her armor to fight the evil king.” She could hear the shakiness in her own voice.“Remember how she tried to teach me, and I just ended up sewing all the parts together into a knot?”

Lea had barely been tall enough to look over her grandmother's sewing table. She’d had to sit in Grandma’s lap as she worked. Lea had begged her grandma to help her make her doll into a knight, because she hadn't been able to find even one knight outfit for her; there hadn't even been a knight outfit to buy for the boy dolls that she could have put on her doll instead. She could have put her in the prince/king’s clothes, but then the evil king would have been naked, and the evil king couldn't go to war if he was naked. Her grandma had listened to her rants about how important her dolls' armor would be and how it was crucial to saving the kingdom. 

So Grandma had stepped up to make the armor herself. It had taken two weeks to finish the outfit; every day of those two weeks Lea had come over and sat in her grandma's lap as she worked. When they’d finished, Lea gathered her parents and Grandpa around for a grand unveiling of her Princess Knight. She’d presented the doll in its new outfit with shiny, silver fabric for the chestplate, boots, and arm bands. Under that were a shirt and pants made of a fabric that somewhat resembled a chainmail pattern. 

Looking at it now, the homemade knight’s outfit still on the doll all these years later, it didn't look as realistic as it had to her back then. She could see imperfections and the obvious flaws, and she loved it even more for them. The doll itself had seen its better days and so had the horse. Both had smudges of marker on them, and the outfit had small stains left by messy, little hands. Bits of the paint that made up her face had chipped away. Those things hadn't mattered back then, and they didn't bother Lea now, either.

She’d loved that outfit so much that later when she had gotten a toy horse for Christmas that her doll could ride, she’d begged her grandma to try to make some armor for the horse, too. They’d gone back into the sewing room and made the best horse armor they could. Lea had declared that because its rider was at Grandma’s house, the horse needed to stay at there with Grandma and Princess Knight. Time and time again, she had roped her grandparents into playing knights and castles with her pretending that couches and tables and books were fortified castles, as her dolls did war. 

The gentle hands of Lea's mother wiped tears from her eyes and pulled Lea back out of her memories. Looking around at the room, she didn't feel like she had been brought back into the present; it felt like she was in a different world. Her uncles and aunts were holding their toys showing her cousins how they worked. Her younger cousins, barely teenagers, were playing with toys they had sworn they’d outgrown and didn't need, while the cousins her age were finally smiling and meeting her eye without a hint of anger in their glances. The sadness hadn’t  left, but it was combined with a memory of love and a joy that they had all pushed out in their pain. She wasn't sure if when this moment ended, her family would still be mad at her for her absence. She’d understand if they still were. That anger didn't matter as much to her now. Not when she was holding in her hands a reminder of how much her grandma had loved her.