What is one of your earliest childhood memories?

I doubt the linen closet in Missouri and the coat closet in Chicago are related. They probably aren’t, but it is curious that out of my myriad childhood homes, I remember only those two.

Squeezing into the bottom of a linen closet at ten was a challenge. It was either tiny relative to the coat closet in the windy city, or I’d grown since I was 2-1/2. I’ll let you decide. When I folded my body into the linen closet, I would dislodge the bottom shelf and create an avalanche of folded towels and blankets tumbling around me. I shoved them above, beside, and beneath me as I pulled the door until it latched.

When I left my tiny house, closing the door with fallen linens piled on the floor was challenging. I’d bunch the towels up like crumpled paper, shove them into the closet, and force the door closed. Mom insisted we keep the linen door closed. Usually, however, the door was left askew, with her cardinal red towels peeking out into the hallway. I was ten. You expected me to fold things up neatly when I was done?

Situated on the condo’s second floor, the linen closet was warm and toasty year-round. Not so, with the Chicago coat closet in a house my mother described as a “big, drafty monstrosity.” That same phrase could describe the palatial coat closet I claimed as my own as a 2-year-old.

Cold and itchy coats brushed the top of my head as I crouched atop Mom’s fur-topped boots, Dad’s tall, metal-clasped boots, and, of course, two sets of child-size red vinyl boots, one pair for Beth and a second for my toddler toes. A tiny infant or still in the womb, my brother was bootless and left out of the closet. The floor was a clutter of random snowsuits, scarves, mittens (sometimes damp, always cold), hats, and fallen jackets. In the winter, I wrapped the jackets around myself to keep warm. If there was a cardboard box where small items belonged, I crushed it.

However, my hidden refuge was more than a home for coats and damp mittens. It was the family post office, and I was the Postmaster General. Peculiarly, the mail delivery slot was in the closet instead of the front door. (It was probably a church committee decision to keep drafts out of the front room; the house was a parsonage, after all). Once a day, the letter carrier opened the slot and slid magazines, newspapers, bills, sometimes a letter from Grandma, and junk mail on top of me. Along with the mail came a bitter cold tempest of Chicago winter. This was when the postmaster became a post carrier. I would scoop up the mail, leave my hideaway, and dutifully deliver it to Mom.

When not tending to my postal duties, I functioned as a sentry by spying on the neighbors through what was now a periscope on the world. A human CCTV, I would watch my older sister or neighbor children ride their bikes in front of the house. When church members came to the house for a committee meeting or to a tea hosted by Mom, I saw them first. (She told me years later how much hosting tea was anathema to her.)

When I remember my two small refuges, I feel the safety of a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. The two closets were my place away from the noise of the family extroverts and the loud invaders, be they church ladies drinking tea or my sister’s older friends. To this day, I favor small houses, small cars, and space away from others to reconnect and reenergize my soul.