The Referee's Closet

My mom really wanted a downstairs bathroom.

When we bought our house in 1977, there was an unfinished half bath. Plumbed, but without fixtures of any sort, it held the promise of an additional washroom in our single lavatory home. It also held the promise of a monumental task for my father, not the handiest guy in the room, but Mom went ahead and bought wallpaper and cut and sponged it to perfection, fully anticipating a bifold door, new flooring, a toilet, a sink and items from the JCPenney catalog she had picked out and circled to hang on the walls. 

But the bathroom never happened.

You see, my dad was a hockey referee and our unfinished half bathroom, over time, became an equipment closet. 

Now, if you like hockey and you don't mind the pong of last season's Cooperalls wafting out at you as you are carrying your Orville Redenbacher popcorn and Stewart's ginger ale into the den to watch Fantasy Island on a Friday night, it's all good; but if you are my mom, a stinky door-less repository for hockey gadgetry, freshly wallpapered in gold and black Gibson Girls, was not exactly a palatable compromise. 

Our equipment room held pucks, sticks, skates (a.k.a "Tacks"), duffel bags, team jerseys, black polyester ref pants, black and white ref sweaters, extra skate laces, whistles, tape, pads, long johns, and after a few mishaps, a CCM helmet for Dad following one too many concussive discussions of "How did I get home?" repeated throughout the course of an evening.

My girl friends could have cared less about the closet and sauntered by it with their arms full of sleeping bags and Barbie styling heads, giggly and eager for nights of doll hair curling and baby pink lipstick application. With my guy friends, though, it gave me instant street cred to be able to show them what was in there.  

Easy to find due to its odiferousness, the neighborhood boys would tromp in and go straight to the bathroom/not bathroom. They'd touch the skate blades to see how sharp they were, they'd turn the pucks over to see if any were emblazoned with team logos, they'd squeeze the thin plastic water bottles, some still wet, with long, spitty, reedy straws. I hung back, but watched them, careful to be sure they didn't disturb anything that was off limits, but really nothing in that closet was. 

Mom didn't spend a ton of time in the den, despite the fact that she was able to decorate that particular room as she saw fit, with Cape Cod photos and carved wooden souvenirs of peg legged pirates and yellow slickered fishermen, probably because she had to walk by that damn un-bathroom every time she wanted to go watch TV.

One time during a forbidden high school party, a boy who'd never been to my house thought in his blind and drunken state that it actually was a bathroom. We caught him just in time to spin him around, in a retro move borrowed from pin the tail on the donkey, and push him out the back door and down the steps into the yard to york his guts out.

Penalty box for that dude...two minutes for tripping.

Later, when I went back and visited my childhood home as an adult, I saw that the good folks who bought the house from us finally finished that bathroom. It was powdery, and pastel hued and functional and I'm a hundred percent sure it adds immensely to the value of the place. 

But, it was the single room in the house I found unrecognizable. 

Good ol' change, though; yes, I suppose it can be good. Especially in this instance for those who don't fully appreciate the versatility (or fine scent of) of a hockey closet. 

Nowadays, and many moons later, when my husband works hard or exercises like a beast and sweats to the point of total funkiness, I don't mind at all, (though he prefers to shower it away as soon as possible). I try to explain that it's no bother. It's not a problem. 

 "You see dear", I explain, "to me, you smell like home".  

 

 #mushroomtumbler