My grandmother and her two sisters lived in the small town of Beulah, Colorado. Nora Annie England Challinor Thomson was an intellectual, talented woman who was always positive. She had a deep sense of caring for all people. My grandmother was dignified, had a keen interest in history, played the piano and loved to read. Born in Liverpool, England, she came to live in the United States when she was just nine.
I loved the entire house that my grandparents had purchased in 1915 as a summer home, but my favorite space was the my grandmother’s bedroom. The house was expanded, updated and a bathroom put in the early 1950s. It was at that time the house became an all year home, not just a summer house.
My grandmother’s bedroom was the most intriguing place with its sleigh bed, tall dresser, a lower dresser with large oval mirror and the armoire all in a dark stained wood. Then just in front of one of the four windows that overlooked the canyon was my grandmother’s desk. It reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture with straight simple lines. I often wondered if my grandmother had sat at this desk to write letters to her love, Harry Albert Thomson whom she married in the early 1900s. The wall paper in the bedroom was very colorful and somewhat wild and flowery. It did not seem at all like my dignified grandmother but then it was somewhat quilted and my grandmother had a wild side. She and I would walk out into the night when a full moon was about and howl at the moon. Her bedroom, as did the other two had built in book shelves. Books were always present in the house. I loved looking at books in this bedroom, reading them and feeling their thin pages. In later years when I lived in the house, this room became my bedroom where I would relish the present, dream of the future and embrace the past.
As I look at this big bedroom, I recall the earlier one before the present house was remodeled. Coming up the tiny creaking stairs through my two great aunts’ bedroom, you had to walk right in the center of the room because the slopping roof. My grandmother’s bedroom had a double bed that was almost as long as the room itself, a small aisle with a single bed off to the side. At the end of the beds where you would put your head was a window. As a small child, I would gaze out into the cool Colorado summer nights and feel the chill and see millions of stars. I always felt very safe in this house and particularly in this bedroom. I would go to bed before my grandmother would come up. She did not know that I lay awake waiting for her to come so I could listen to the wisps of sound as she turned pages in her book. Just before she turned out the light, she would stand over me, touch my cheek and give me a gentle kiss. I heard the whispers of the sheets as she got into her bed. When I heard the trill of the light cord, I would be asleep. At dawn I could feel the light creep into the window and start to stretch across the beds. In this room, in this house, I could feel the love of generations.
Another dining Room I wrote about is here:
