A Love Letter to Basements
My purple Big Wheel is rounding the steel support beam as my 4-year-old legs pump like crazy to win the great basement race of 1992. Behind me are my best friends on their Big Wheel trikes, and my younger brother in his Cozy Coupe, pushed by my mom. I can still feel the scraping of the plastic wheels on the bare concrete floor, not knowing whether or not I would make the turn, or fly off into the unfinished walls. At 4 years old, the basement was our playground during long Chicago winters.
It’s my seventh birthday and all my friends are gathered around a card table in our basement waiting for a piece of homemade chocolate cake. Even though kids love neon Crisco frosting, store-bought cake was a crime in our house. I didn’t come to appreciate this until much later in life. After cake, we all tried our hand at a piñata held up by my dad. He made it hard or easy depending on your skill level to make sure the uncoordinated kids (me) felt special! As a seven-year-old, the basement had transformed into a playroom, full of our favorite toys that my parents didn’t want scattered around the main floor.
It’s Friday night as a preteen and I’m scrambling downstairs to call dibs on the TV before my brother. It’s the only TV in our house and if I don’t claim it by about 6 pm, I would be stuck trying to convince him to play Super Mario, the only video game I like, instead of Mortal Kombat. My choice of evening entertainment during this phase of life was TGIF. Sabrina was my idol during this period of my life, and my love of Fall and Halloween is greatly influenced by that show. If I wasn’t sitting on our slightly musty couch watching Sabrina or Cory and Topanga’s love story, I was on the floor with a giant pillow and loads of old comforters. Eleven-year-old me loved having a space to watch my shows without my parents.
My two best friends and I have somehow rented The Shining at age 14, and we are definitely too young to watch it. This is right around the time when kids (not me, of course) started getting cell phones. We were watching the scene when Danny is riding his trike around the hotel. Right as he turns the corner and sees the twins, my friend’s cell phone vibrates on the coffee table. We all collectively lose our minds thinking that the movie has somehow come to life and the creepy twins are going to kill us. Something that I sincerely miss about this age is how influenced you could be to act absolutely crazy. It was like being drunk on your friends’ reactions with zero alcohol involved. Having a basement in high school meant that your friends were always at your house, which may have been the start of my homebody tendencies.
I’m coming home after a long day of working as a lifeguard. A cold basement in the summer is close to heaven, but a cold basement in the summer when you have crispy skin from 8 hours in the sun is otherworldly. I snuggle under the same old comforters and watch John Hughes movies while T9 texting my crush – hoping he would show up at my window with a jukebox. If I ever got my crush to hang out with me, it was always in the basement. It was far enough away from nosy parents to have “deep” conversations that led to the most innocent and pure love of all. The kind between two people who have no concept of the real world and no real problems. As a teenager, basements were the places where I fell in love and had my first heartbreaks.
My parents are out of town for the weekend and I have told a few friends to come over for a party. Each of those friends has told more people about the party, and suddenly my basement is full of college kids drinking Keystone Light and raspberry vodka. Despite being the host, I’m unconcerned about how much fun people are having, the complete lack of food served, or how much beer is being spilled during a game of flip cup. We will deep clean the whole basement before my parents come home anyway. Part of me misses no stress hosting. The other part of me knows I’m far too type A to be that chill anymore. Is it even a party if there isn’t a charcuterie board?! A basement in your early 20’s was a place of refuge when you were used to having independence.
I am heading downstairs to get a beer in the old fridge that my parents moved to the basement after upgrading their kitchen appliances. As I walk down the stairs, I realize how long it has been since I spent any time down here. I live in the city and occasionally spend weekends at home to get away from the hustle. In a turn of events, any time spent at home now is time I want to spend with my parents, rather than escaping to the basement. The most action the basement sees anymore is when one of us runs down to get more beers for our card games. Once my favorite place to be, now sitting empty waiting for someone to use it again. And that may happen. Maybe my brother or I will have kids and they will run down to the basement to play with our old toys, or simply to escape the eyes of the grown-ups. But during my late twenties, the basement was a place of sweet memories that I hold close to my heart.
I’m hosting a housewarming party in the basement of the new home that I share with my boyfriend. It’s a disco-themed party because our basement is pretty retro. As ABBA blares through the speakers, I take a second to soak up the moment and be grateful that I now have my very own basement to make memories in. It may seem silly to speak of a room this way, but a basement has always been a place to spend time with friends and family. It has hosted years of laughter, games, and bonding. And for that, especially now that we are all spending more time at home, I think it deserves this sentiment. So here’s to you basements, may you continue to be a playroom, a TV haven, an escape, or a party space for many more generations of people to enjoy.
