There is a sacred space in my childhood home. A portal into the past, of days long gone. Beneath the steps in our upstairs family room stands a door about two feet high, as if one has suddenly stepped into the world of Alice in Wonderland. The shiny brass door knob and honey oak wood reveal its 90s roots.

You pull open the door and find a tiny room, just big enough for two small children to sit cross-legged comfortably. The walls are decorated with crayon, marker, and pencil, every inch designed by the hands and minds of little girls. There’s a crayon-scribbled rainbow on the sloped ceiling, declarations of elementary school crushes encircled in hearts, no doubt accompanied by whispers and giggles, a secret password penciled in childish handwriting, words misspelled. 

I could not tell you how the coloring on the walls began. To me, it feels as if it always was. I don’t remember our parents scolding us or growing angry upon discovering the walls to our little room were filled with drawings. Now, as an adult and a mother, I cannot imagine discovering my children defacing and ruining the walls within our home. Maybe my mother knew it was a lost cause and gave in, telling us we could color as long as it was only on these walls, in this room. Maybe my mother was furious. Or maybe, for a moment, she remembered what it was like to be a kid and she simply let us be, watching silently as we created new memories.

Over time, it evolved into a secret meeting place. Each time we brought friends over, they awed at the excitement of having permission to draw and color on walls. They added their own words and drawings to the ever-growing canvas. As it grew, we grew with it, and the masterpieces within formed into our own kind of museum. 

Years went by and the room went untouched. A new generation of children were brought into our family and layers have been added by grandchildren, but all-in-all it remains the same as it was many years ago. Now, the room is filled with an old dollhouse, a few toys, cabbage patch dolls from the 80s, and a box of doll clothes to match. These relics from girlhood remain preserved in our own little portal. 

I grew up surrounded by women. My grandmother lived next door, the path woven between the trees now overgrown since she passed away and my grandfather remarried and moved. My mother gave birth to four girls, the large age gap between my two older sisters and my younger sister and me created a unique environment. It was like having three mothers in some ways, the lines of mother and sister fluid and blurred some days and concrete on others. My little women, my dad would call his group of girls, a look of pride in his soft brown eyes. 

Others had a different idea of what it was like to have so many girls. “Your poor father,” people would joke, a laugh in their throats, as if girls were a curse to fathers. “How does he stay sane?” they’d ask. I grew up hearing the usual opinions and words to my father. You must have really wanted a boy. Too bad you don’t have a son to do xyz with. You and your wife didn’t want to try for number five? As a young girl, these comments baffled me. I knew nothing other than the bonds of sisterhood, and the sacredness and companionship that can exist between women. I knew nothing but pride and love from my father. I never felt as if we disappointed him because we were born girls. I simply could not understand the pity in strangers eyes or the rueful remarks.

Life as we knew it to be was just normal. We mowed the lawn, like boys. We did yard work, like boys. My sisters hunted and fished with our father, like boys. I scraped my knees, dug in the dirt, climbed trees, and ran wild outdoors, like a boy. We threw baseballs, rode bikes, splashed in the lake, caught frogs, toads, turtles, and worms, like boys.

Except the phrase, “like a boy,” was nonexistent in my childhood world. Instead, I threw a ball like my oldest sister. I enjoyed the outdoors, like my mother. I swam and splashed in the lake, like my grandmother. My sisters fished and hunted, like our father. I scraped my knees, dug in the dirt, climbed trees, and ran wild outdoors, like myself.

My idea of what it meant to be a girl and later, a woman, was being shaped carefully not by the expectations of the outside world, but by our own little world. And like the walls of that childhood playroom, slowly added to over the years and claimed beautiful by the artists, without knowing it, my sisters and I were adding to the walls of our own hearts. We drew and colored to our wildest dreams, allowed to create and add to the canvas. Years have only added layers of color, a deepening of hue and a myriad of shades. Experiences have added markings and etchings, secret to our own hearts, but shared and cherished by others we allow into the inner walls of our hearts.

I watch the new generation of girls my sisters and I brought forth into this world. I and relish the opportunity to be taken back to girlhood, now through the eyes of a mother. I smile as they play with toys we once played with and enter into the secret room to add their own layer of artwork onto the walls. Remember this, I want to shout as they play barefoot outdoors in the grass, with mismatched clothes and windblown hair. Remember this, I ache to whisper to my daughter, as she pulls on her favorite yellow puddle boots for the thousandth time, laughing into the sky, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Remember this, I want to say to my sisters as I watch the bond between our children grow. 

Because one day, little girl, you will also know the bond of sisterhood, by blood and friendship. One day, you will know what it feels like to be a part of your own troupe of little women. Or what it means to add brushstrokes to the pages of your own heart, and to have others create alongside you. 

Guest essay written by Abigail Roeller. Abigail lives in the Twin Cities, MN with her husband, 3-year-old daughter, and newborn son. When she’s not writing or taking care of babies, she enjoys watercolor painting, an addicting book series, and a good cup of coffee. She grew up with three sisters on a lake in the northwoods of Wisconsin with her mother perpetually yelling, “get outside!” and is happy to say she loves all things involved with water and the outdoors because of it (Thanks, mom). 

Photo by N’tima Preusser.