My room at The Irving House in Cambridge is one that I would have aptly described in my former life as a Realtor as "cozy". The pretty key word for small, this room is cozy to say the least. At just 7 feet wide by 12 feet long, it's approximately the size of my walk-in closet at home, a space I never could have imagined sleeping in for 10 days.
I admit to being a little shocked when I opened the door for the first time. When I reserved the room, I knew that the website said that it was a small one, and let me reiterate: they weren't kidding. It's tiny. I've had cut-rate cruise ship cabins that were bigger than this hotel room, and that's saying something. Quite literally, the room is just twice as wide as the door to enter it. With a double size bed, a nightstand, small desk and chair, it's pretty well full. I heaved my large suitcase up onto the bed to get ready to unpack, and looked around for a closet and dresser, somehow assuming that I must have missed during the 4 foot walk from my door to the bed. I hadn't. There were none. There's a two foot long bar hanging in the corner by the door, a makeshift closet in a tiny space. I'm here for 10 nights, and although I didn't pack enough clothes for every day that I'm here, the suitcase was full.
I improvised. I hung as many things as I could on the bar by the door, tucked my shoes under the little desk, and put the rest of my clothes into the nightstand, sans my socks, which are too bulky and have to sit on top of it. I began to wonder if I'd go crazy in this tiny, blue closet after 10 days of being cooped up in here.
As it turned out, it didn't take long for me to learn to appreciate the advantages of my new surroundings. The walls are painted a soft blue, the wood floor creaks softly beneath the carpet, and it stays warm during the day and cool at night. I'm using the fire escape outside the bathroom window as refrigerator, and it works like it was made just for that purpose. When I want a cold drink, I don't have walk down three flights of stairs to get one. I just open the bathroom window and reach out onto the fire escape. There's a little flat-screen TV mounted on the wall above the desk, which I have yet to turn on and likely never will. I in this roughly 84 foot square space, I really do have everything I need.
Residency is both exciting and exhausting. When I come back to my room at the end of the day and nestle into the soft bed covered in a down comforter and pillows like clouds, I'm at home for the moment in a space that seems less and less all the time like a closet, and more and more like a cocoon. When I think about my big house back home, as I sit here on the bed and write, I wonder for a moment why I ever thought I needed that much space to begin with. I love my house, don't get me wrong, but I love this little room near a rooftop in Cambridge in a very special way. For these 10 days and nights, it's my haven. My safe place to write and think and dream. My place to worry about what might happen in my workshop tomorrow, when 7 people whose opinions mean a great deal to me will spend an entire hour talking about my work and deciding whether it's good enough. Somehow, though, this space gives me comfort. When I'm in this room, nothing else really matters. For today, that's enough.
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