I got seasick scrolling through my Cleopatra essay tonight, and while looking across my room to rest my eyes, it hit me for the first time how many other girls must have lived in this room before me. The current Aberdare Hall opened in 1895. That’s 123 years ago. I’m only here for six months, but if we assume that most girls stay at Aberdare somewhere between one and three years, this room has probably seen between sixty and a hundred residents before me, some of whom have been dead for decades. I wonder how many of them felt the same grudging fondness for it that I do. I wonder how many were slightly embarrassed that their room is twice the size of most of the other rooms in Aberdare, and how many couldn’t sleep because of the traffic noise, and how many had to figure out how to turn off the radiator because it made the room too hot, and how many had to kill spiders that got in when they opened the windows to dispel the smell of their leftover dinners. I wonder what the furniture looked like before the invention of plywood, and what the original blinds looked like before the invention of vinyl.
It’s a very strange feeling. The halogen light filtering through my maroon lampshade is almost reminiscent of candlelight, and with the shadows thick under my desk and at the far edges of the room, you can almost picture a time before electricity was installed. The leaded glass windows and their brick frame are original, and presumably so are the mantel and the moldings (though I wager they’ve been repainted many times, because the paint is so thick in places that the corners are rounded).
Also, I’m pretty sure the window has dripped for the entire 123 years of its life, because the wall under it is totally destroyed and puckered and the damage has been painted over, leaving bumps and ridges.