When I was about 6, I remember walking into my friend’s house, next door, and feeling woozy. My friend was Chinese, and her house always smelled like wontons and moth balls. They had an off-white pile carpet and ample north light glowing into the back of the house that, despite the heavy air, gave the space a dreamy, vacuous look. I could read, but I was unable to make anything of the vertical characters on the Chinese newspaper that her father left on the coffee table. I remember the room swaying after I entered, cloaked in heavy scent and unfamiliarity, and feeling as if I might fall over. It was a brief sensation, but I can’t forget it.
I had this same sensation several times when I was younger, always following me into an unfamiliar place: mostly into heavy roomfuls for chotchkes, homes of the elderly, still and too-quiet. But oddly, as I’ve aged, I can’t report having had feelings like that in a long time.
Then last night, when I was in the shower, I felt my husband and his brother running through the hallway outside the bathroom. When they felt like they were about to pound through the door, I felt my knees brace and the walls move closer in. In one movement, I swung open the curtain and lept into the doorjamb, and there I clung like a web as I watched the medicine cabinet door swing back and forth for something like twenty seconds. The room swayed, the invisible train rumbled away, and there I was, dripping onto the tile floor and wondering, wooo, that’s something I haven’t felt in a while.
Ah yes, the old folks home. Gets me every time. What is it about those places?