Not My Best Work…

You know what I could never quite fucking understand? The concept of the “white room.” You may be familiar with this idea if you’re an eighties baby who grew to be a nineties kid who actually played outside and the only time you spent in front of the screen was for Saturday morning cartoons or a marathon Sonic the Hedgehog gaming session in the summer.

I hadn’t heard of a white room since childhood until I was in my late twenties. Me and my then fiance at the time were visiting his family in Atlanta, GA. His cousin was giving us a tour of her “modest” single family home which had at least 2000 more square footage on it than our small Philly rowhome. We walked through the front door past a simple but updated kitchen. To the left of the hallway there was a pretty spacious living room with a flatscreen TV, and past the living room was another room. It was sophisticated with white upholstered couches, a fluffy shag rug and a glass bookshelf. When his cousin pointed to the room, she introduced it as her very own “white room.” She then added the disclaimer, “But no one actually sits in there; it’s really just nice to look at.”

In the name of all things Black culture in tradition, including sweet potato pie with brown sugar coated crust and catfish fried extra hard with a side of spaghetti, “The White Room” is one tradition I refuse to pass down. There are moments even today when I enter my childhood home as an adult and look at the living room my own mother decided would be her personal “white room.” There are white leather couches framing a glass coffee table with a set of end tables to match. There are gold metal horizontal blinds that sound like a small car crash if you open or close them too quickly and floor to ceiling mirrors so you can watch yourself potentially thumbing through a family photo album or encyclopedia. As a part of this transition, I remember her moving the TV from the living room into the basement with the justification of, “The living room is the first room you see when you enter the house, and I don’t want it to be a mess just because y’all want to sit and eat snacks and watch cartoons.”

While the “white room” in theory was supposed to be a place where you might light a candle and catch up on the latest Terri McMillan novel or have deep family conversations about Barack Obama’s HOPE campaign, most days it sat empty and served merely as a place where you double-checked if you had your keys and wallet before entering the outside world for the day.

And admittedly as an adult, as much as my childhood home feels inviting most days, it also feels just like the Department of Motor Vehicles. There’s a rigid protocol and procedure for how to navigate everything from trash disposal to parking spaces and if you happen to skip a step or ignore the protocol altogether, the consequence is my Boomer mom crashing out because you threw an orange peel into the trashcan instead of the garbage disposal.

Because if Boomers cling to anything, it’s the appearance of control and order, even if your mental health is an absolute mess.

You may have heard of the concept of “bedroom families vs. living room families.” Parents.com defines “living room families” as those who most often congregate in one common area of the home, like a designated family room or basement, usually where the main TV is. “Bedroom families” however refers to families who spend most of their home time in separate rooms, like bedrooms or basements, usually with their own TVs or devices.

When my own little family returns from a busy day of school pick-ups, soccer practice and grocery store runs we enter a small rowhome with an open concept. A Bluey Kitchen playset sits across from my very real refrigerator where my toddler will mimic me and wipe down her LED burners while I load the dishwasher after dinner. A toy basket overflowing with Squishmallows, Popsockets and half empty bubble tubes from summer sits in the dining room. And it’s no rare occurence to see my four-year-old fly by the TV in the living room on a scooter while I catch up on the latest episode of Loot on Apple TV. When you walk into my home, you don’t have to guess if I have kids, it’s obvious. As it should be because they actually LIVE there.

In some ways, It makes me grieve certain parts of my own childhood. My parents absolutely did the best they could with the tools they had at the time, but there was definitely an emphasis on cleanliness, order and the appearance of perfection. Toys were almost always seen as clutter that needed to be put away in the presence of company and play was not the priority. In fact, I remember my mom promptly evicting my Barbies and their playhouse from the basement to the garage, after she decided my collection was a little too much. The winters were the worst. I had to put on a jacket just so Barbie could get in her gold Ferrari and get to her job as a fashion designer on time.

When it comes to bedroom kids vs. living room kids, I think it all boils down to what you ultimately think family life should look and feel like. As a mother of two, I totally understand that annoyance that comes with feeling like your house will never be completely clean and uncluttered. There are plenty of days I’m peeling hardened Play-doh from my wooden floor and tempted to throw the whole damn toy box out the window. However, in my opinion it’s a small cost of living. Because I know that at the most I’m going to get a good decade of hearing the rumble of my kids racing around the kitchen island after the dog has snatched a doll shoe. The day my 11-year-old isn’t as excited about putting up Christmas window cling is coming sooner than I probably realize. However, I’m hoping that home doesn’t feel like a place she has limited access to no matter how old she gets. And I’m hoping that I’m creating a space where my children feel free to be all versions of themselves, and not just the versions that don’t interfere with their parents’ strict schedules and pristine appearances.

One of the best parts of parenting is the opportunity you have to abandon traditions and values that don’t really serve you, and I hope my fellow elder millennials join me in laying “the white room” to rest. I’ve forgiven my mom for banishing me and my Barbies to the basement. In addition, I’m intentionally building a life that not only looks good, but feels good (with more emphasis on the latter). Most importantly, I want my children to feel that their comfort and contributions to our household matter more than the opinions of relatives that visit once a year or a random compliment from a contractor. Because ultimately living rooms are for living and mortgages are too high to be having rooms we don’t use.