week two // you are my wild

This wardrobe has seen a few things.

My dad built this in 1987, a year after my brother was born.  We lived in a log cabin, placed comfortably in the piney woods of (then) rural Georgia.  My mom and dad (with the help of my uncles also) built the modest but cozy home a year before I was born in 1980.  At that time, we had a little pot bellied stove between the dining and living room- our only source of heat for many years.  We had no doors on any of the bedrooms upstairs, and you had to remember to bend down when getting out of bed lest you bump your head on a slopey ceiling.  3 out of my 4 bedroom walls were made from what appeared to be large Lincoln Logs- small carvings and drawings inscribed on the places where the logs met the discreet side of my bedframe... things that needed to be written like, "Dera sleeps here" or "I love Gus" (our old dog) and who knows what else.

I clearly remember everything about the years when my brother was very little.  I recall having frequent nightmares that brought me into his room and crawling under his crib, needing to hear his little baby breaths in order to make me feel better and fall asleep.  I was fiercely protective of him at that age (even with our cousins and my own grandparents), but grew out of it when he was old enough to wreak havoc on my super-serious-uh-ma-gah teenage life.  This wardrobe was a very practical piece then.  It was a storage solution in a house with very few closets.  It held an array of baby blue baby clothes in the beginning, and before long it hung tee shirts with superheros' faces.  Baskets with matchbox cars were contained in there.  Then action figures.  And in no time, it would hold my brother's collection of paintball paraphernalia (it was rural Georgia in the '90's after all).  This was about the time that I exited for college.

When I graduated from college and married Terry, we began renting a loft in Atlanta.  Although entirely different from the warmth of my childhood home (or from the nasty dorms and apartments of my college days), the loft was similar in that there were no closets and there were plenty of places to bump your head, if not careful.  I inherited my brother's childhood wardrobe.  It held a tv for a minute.  Then a computer.  Then baby clothes (here comes Fiona!).  I loved having a memory of baby Joey with us so much that it has even followed us here.

Now, in our current home, we have enough closets (something I never thought I'd say), and tvs and computers aren't 30" deep like they used to be.  We don't play paintball (thank goodness), and I'm pretty sure my brother has no intention of hauling this big heavy thing up to his apartment in Brooklyn. So it sits here, in our bedroom.  A getaway of sorts.  And to only one.  My little introvert, Fiona.  When Neve is in one of her talking-at-you moods, Fiona quietly grabs her comic and slips away.  We all need a place like this, right?

Compared to the old world stories of many antiques sitting in parlors or antique shops around the world, this wardrobe is pretty fresh and uninteresting.  But it holds a few of my stories.  And it's making more with my children.

(Check out the other 13 amazing photos by the other photogs here.)