The Basement Transformation That Helped Shape My World

When I was young, I loved baby dolls. They were very sweet to me and I enjoyed being their protector. Several Christmases I got a new baby to care for. One year when I was a little older, I received a Baby Alive doll. She came with a pink plastic, divided bowl where I mixed her powdered food into flavors like Cheery Cherry, Bitey Banana, and Delicious Lime. That food wasn't cheery or delicious. It was nasty. (I may have tasted it a few times! I mean, you can't feed your baby something without first tasting it yourself.) After feeding her that gelatinous goo, she needed a diaper change. Looking back, it was pretty weird. Probably a little creepy. And actually that is the last doll I remember receiving as a gift.

The other day I was thinking about when my family moved to our new home in Pennsylvania in 1975. I was nearly four years old. I think my earliest memory is from when I walked into the basement of that house. The previous owners did not depart under good circumstances, and apparently while they lived there they didn't do anything to maintain the basement. My dad says, "It was a wreck." My mom's recollection is a little more blunt: "It was disgusting and worth a good cry."

It was probably one of the worst environments I had been in. I still remember finding a doll left alone lying on the cold floor in that dark, dank, filthy space. Seeing that doll left like that was traumatic for me; that's a pretty young age to have memories from.

After we moved in, my parents worked to clean up the mud and plants, the moldy and slimy mess that was the basement. My dad started building a basement bathroom right away because we needed a second bathroom. It took him a few months to complete it in his spare time. Over the next few years, he finished off the remainder of the basement, making it into a second floor of livable space.

The only living room on the main level of the house was off-limits to activity . . . you know, the room preserved for some future, unknown, special occasion. My friends' homes had them too, rooms that were always ready for that thing that never occurred. If we stepped in, we felt like we were living life on the edge, breaking the rules.

The basement became the hub for our family and anyone who came over. Pretty much everything significant happened down there.

The basement rec room was where we watched the available four channels of television. When a friend came over to play, we played in the basement playroom. If I had a sleepover, it happened in the basement. Birthday parties . . . the gang went down the steps to the basement. Houseguests ➡️ basement. Needed to type a paper? Got out the Royal Quiet De Luxe manual typewriter in the basement. When the summers were hot and the temperature upstairs was unbearable, we headed to the basement.

My mother was a seamstress and over my lifetime she made countless milestone outfits in that basement, like my tennis outfits, prom gown, military ball gown, bridesmaids gowns for my wedding, maternity dresses, and outfits for the dolls of my own daughters. My mom homecooked most of our meals; the pantry staples and the white Coldspot chest freezer were in the basement. My dad was an early adopter of all things tech . . . his office was in the basement. My sister threw my parents a silver wedding anniversary party . . . in the basement. Another sister moved home for a short stint; she lived in the basement. In the mood to listen to my brother's Kiss rock album on vinyl? The stereo was in the basement.

There were some unpleasant times in that basement, like every time we had a heavy rain, guess where the water came in? We spent a lot of time moving items off the floor and cleaning up water. That happened often enough that to this day I feel significant tension when it's raining hard.

It's funny the things you don't think two seconds about in the moment and the things you remember forever. Growing up, I didn't think one thing or another about where I spent the bulk of my time. And I don't have a single memory of the basement cleanup and rebuild process, which had to have been a pretty decent amount of work and noise. The neglected doll and the grime, though—those made it into my recallable memories.

When my parents sold that house, I went with my mom and a sister for my own final walk-through. That was a great place to call home, but I had lived away in other states long enough that I wasn't particularly sad they were selling it. The one time I choked back a few tears was walking through that empty basement, realizing it was the final farewell to a space that had helped shape my world.

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