In the 80s, in our very first home. I found myself breaking up with wallpaper. It was just too much. Later, in the 90s, I’d break up with carpet, as well, but for different reasons.
The Breakup
My breakup with wallpaper came before my first child, so it had nothing to do with all the things children drop and grind into fibers of a home. It was about the seven layers of wallpaper in the foyer. The patch of wall was small (just a foyer), but removing the layers took days and inspired many off-color remarks, sometimes into the wee hours.
The final straw came in our second home, when I peeled away badly applied wallpaper only to find it stuck directly onto bare sheetrock: no tape, no mud, no primer, not even a coat of paint.
“Never again!” I told my husband.
Mom’s Garden, Mom’s Trunk
Last week my feelings were moving around and leading me to unexpected places. I visited Mom’s garden, spread more of her ashes, and kicked through the weeds looking for any signs of anything she might have planted.
Later that day, I decided to open the old trunk that she had fixed for me when we moved to Alabama. Purportedly, it belonged to one of my grandmothers but was in bad shape. Mom painted the outside, restored the hardware, and lined the inside with… wallpaper.
Even back then, Mom had wall skills. Her paint edges were immaculate—no splatters or overpainting—and wallpaper seamlessly danced into place under her hands.
I didn’t flinch when I opened the trunk and discovered the wallpaper. My feelings had been busy all week and were now munching popcorn as they watched this play out: the trunk from my tweens versus my 20-something breakup with wallpaper.
A Yellow Room and Velvet Memories
When we moved from Spain to Athens, our family went from a twenty-room, three-story house to a three-bedroom, two-bath home with a two-car garage. I know Mom enjoyed our years in Spain, but moving into a just-right home for her family of four might have been empowering. She painted and papered our rooms.
Mine was yellow.
“Yellow stimulates intelligence and creativity,” she told me.
That worked for me. I didn’t have any favorite colors anyway—or colors I hated.
After she papered the east wall of my room, she lined the trunk with the same wallpaper, complemented with yellow velvet panels. The inside is not in perfect shape now, but her handiwork held up well after fifty plus years—some spent in a hot farm hangar.
Repairing the Past
I sat with the trunk for a spell, spent time reinstalling the lift-up shelf and thanking Mom.
Not all parents do survives and follows their children through the years. The wallpaper and the yellow walls in north Alabama are long gone by now, perhaps painted over in a boring off-white. Other things Mom did for us are lost, too.
But I have this chunk of a memory.
I’ll take care what I store in it. I’ll spend a little more time repairing the lining, a yellow-velvet panel whose double-sided tape didn’t survive the decades. The repair gives me a chance to follow Mom’s hands through a task.
Do you have something—a piece of furniture, object, or room that carries a piece of someone you miss? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025.
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