The Basement Returns

The boys and I remember our first house as the *real* house, where this current one is something of an impostor, in spite of its greater size... But Amy tells me that the reason that the boys loved the old house so much is because they remember playing trains with me in the basement at night.  I remember many nights pushing wooden Thomas-and-Friends trains around  a track...  The boys describe the house with such fondness, focused on its split-level design as a definite plus:  Ian remembers particularly that when you cane in the door, you had the choice of going upstairs or going downstairs (since the inside of the door is really just a landing in the middle of the staircase); he seems to think that's a neat little bonus feature, and I think that this might be partly because he has fond memories from the basement of the house.

But recently, something wonderful has happened to our house:  an appraiser has come to evaluate it, as part of our application process for refinancing, and the wonderful thing is that this visit has forced us to make the house a nicer place to be it's not as effective as planning to sell the house, but it still gets things improved on short order.

In our case, the windfall of the assessor's upcoming visit was the acquisition of a new room in the basement.  Amy gets all the credit for it; it was her idea and she did the painting and carpet-cutting and had the electrician come and add a lightswitch to an otherwise semi-finished room.  But now it's a finished room, and, more importantly, it's the playroom.

I don't understand what makes a basement playroom more of a playroom than the broad space of toys, futons and electronic entertainment of the family room upstairs.  But my guess is that, at least in part, the absence of a TV makes it more of a fun place, because it's consecrated exclusively for play, and not for anything more passive.  Moreover, one can mess up the playroom with impunity, for it is a realm beyond everyday adult consciousness.  And probably just the subterraneousnous of it makes it earthy and exciting, even though the room itself is finished.

But in any case, the kids love to go there.  When I walk in the door, routinely someone will ask me to take them there - somehow it's not the same being there by yourself.  The other night, I had Ian turn off the TV and the computer circa 7:30, and told him he could either do his Latin homework or come join Daniel, Madeleine and me downstairs.  Astonishingly, he chose playroom over Latin.  But what was really wonderful was the way that the three of them just become so engrossed in play, in creative activity, when they're down there; there's a quiet solemnity to it.  And once you get them down there, it's hard to get them out.

There's a marker board that has already had many drawings of Ariel on it, and a few Danielian pictures of pirates and/or skull-and-crossbones.  We have already played board games/card games down there, although sometimes Ian will just read a book while the others play.  One remarkable difference between the Old House Playroom of circa 2008 and the New House Playroom of 2013 is the scenery; a Thomas train-set dominated the old room, but the new room has all kinds of play-house paraphernalia on the periphery - wooden kitchen sink, Madeline's Old House in Paris doll-house, all kinds of stuffed animals.  But the new playhouse is for everyone, even though the four-year-old set has a bit more equipment there than the Bey Blade/Legos/Star Wars crowd.

And most importantly, the new basement has the magic of the old basement.  It seems that one of the most important things for children is to feel time stand still while you navigate through play-of-your-own-making in a space designated just for that purpose.  As the old Jamaica Tourism Bureau commercial used to croon, "What's old is what's new."

(March, 2013)