Lakewood

Somewhere in all this mess, we moved to Lakewood, Ohio. My parents bought a house and I guess this was to perpetrate "the dream." Our house was huge. I do not mean expensive, rich people huge. I mean, built in the early 1900's huge. Lakewood is full of homes like these. Two story homes with four or five bedrooms, a full attic and full basement and large front porches. I was in the middle of my second grade year when we moved here, and coming from the duplex, this seemed like a mansion! I got to pick the room I wanted, and well, it was a fairly easy choice. Apparently the people that lived here before had a boy and a girl as well, and my room had Strawberry Shortcake border. I loved it. This was to be my hideaway. My refuge.
I had a pretty cool bed as a kid too. It was a canopy bed, and it was all done up in pink. My whole room was pink, even the carpet. Almost as if my parents were trying to CONVINCE me I was a girl! The one thing I remember vividly is that my closet was narrow and long. I could walk into the back of it and sit on the floor. This was usually my hiding place during hide and seek games with my brother. I sometimes would pretend this was the wardrobe from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." I just knew that one time I would jump in there and be whisked away into a magical place of freedom, where I would ride away on a lion and rule the land of Lisa forever.