“…There’s a little framed write-up about the place on the counter and it says it used to be ‘The Map Room’…My Italian cream soda is about 100 times too strong and the bagel we split was stale about a week ago…but it’s a cool place with a comfy couch.” – travel journal description of a coffee shop, Memphis, TN – Day 4

The World, More Manageable

This used to be the Map Room, a sloping storage space under the eaves of a dormer, where my uncle would go when he wanted to find somewhere else.

It’s the kind of space where people would store things they don’t use every day: an artificial Christmas tree, an old bassinet, beach chairs, parfait glasses.  For my uncle it was a collection of potential adventures, holed up and suffocated in the musty, humid attic air.

He covered the slanted walls in various maps he’d fought viciously to procure.  A 1950’s map of the US he’d saved from an old school being converted to administrative offices.  An 1890’s world map he’d fist-fought an antique dealer for at an estate sale.  Some outdated roadmaps he’d requested from AAA years ago.  Torn maps in foreign languages that he’d gotten at auctions, winning lots full of thing he had no need for, all for one ragged piece of paper.

He built a row of short desks and workbenches running the length of the space under the peak.  He lowered an old office chair on casters so that he sat with his knees nearly as high as his shoulders and his bottom nearly on the floor, leaning in to keep from scraping his back on the sloping walls.  In this position he scooted, crab-like, along the length of his work surface, studying his maps, converting inches to miles, noting latitudes, trying to tell tundra from taiga.

He hung antique globes from the rafters and filled boxes with maps he’d cut apart, scribbling nonsense on the tops instead of labels. We never were sure why one box said “Turkeys” when inside we found sections of France, Taipei, Milwaukee, and the Baltic Sea, but none of Turkey or even ancient Mesopotamia.  The boxes looked like boxes that should have held greeting cards, but instead held the hopes of places he’d never visited, stacks of sights unseen.   Perhaps the world seemed more manageable sliced into 4” x 6” rectangles.

My uncle never went anywhere.  The possibilities were overwhelming, and he could never decide where to start.  In the Map Room he had everywhere, and so he felt like he wasn’t missing out on anything.

After his death, we cleaned out this room, and I got a splinter taking down a topographical map of the Greater Antilles.  I walked around with it for months because I wanted to have part of this room inside me, me containing it like it had contained him.

With that splinter, I felt like I held him wholly, and that I held the places of the world doubly.

After a while, my skin built up around the splinter like the deposition of sediment in the place it didn’t come from but ultimately belonged, and I knew it was time to get out in the world.

So, yes, to answer your question, this house has tons of storage space.