Usually, when you think of yourself ascending, whether it’s hiking up a mountain, flying in an airplane, or walking to the top floor of your house, you imagine moving into brighter light. But as my boyfriend Kane Hill and I walked up the attic stairway for the first time together, I could almost feel the shadows growing and opening like Venus flytraps to welcome us. The stairs creaked the way they always had, but it sounded more like a warning this time, each squeak a groan of frantic admonition. Our attic didn’t have an unpleasant odor, but it did have the scent of old things that hadn’t seen the light of day for years: furniture, lamps, and trunks stuffed with old clothing too out of fashion to care about or throw out when the previous owners left. They were still good enough for someone else to use. All of it had been accumulated by those my father called “pack rats,” but he also admitted to being one himself. Our garage was neat but jammed with his older tools and boxes of sample building materials, my first tricycle, various hoses, and plumbing fittings he might find use for someday.
