My Closet

For the first thirteen years of my life, I slept in a closet in Hong Kong. As I lay on my plywood bed, my family’s garments hung suspended above me, forming my own undulating sky. Depending on the seasons, my sky changed its density, pattern, and smell. As a child, I would fall asleep imagining my own puppet show from the moving shadows of the clothes. Although the closet was the smallest room I have inhabited, its materiality offered the largest universe for my senses and imagination. More than a refuge for my body, the closet was the shelter for my reveries and memories. It was the haven for hidden treasure, childish amusement and concealed tears.

Measuring only six feet by two and a half feet, my precious world was the only storage space for the six of us in our four hundred square foot apartment on the seventeenth floor.  Underneath my plywood bed sat boxes of various sizes and colors, each containing a piece of my family’s history. On the days when the typhoon kept my brother and me happily away from school, we would squat in front of the boxes and begin our exploration. It was always tricky to decide which box to begin with because we had limited floor area to work with and secondly, the boxes were so strategically placed to fit around the stools that were supporting my bed that any miscalculation would have meant hours of reshuffling. But no matter how careful we were each time, it was inevitable for us to have leftover boxes that we could not accommodate and we would play an endless game of three-dimensional Tetris.    

However frustrating the process was, the discoveries in the boxes made it all worthwhile. Pulling a box out, opening it, and smelling the familiar mothball scent, we unearthed mementos that had long been forgotten, clothes that we have outgrown, and reminisces of my parents’ nauseous fashion taste. Although we performed this ritual every typhoon season, we found new items of interest every year. At the end of the day, my plywood bed would be covered by piles of new treasures that would sustain our amusement until our next adventure.

My precious world had no door. A thin sheet of floral pattern fabric hung loosely on a yellow nylon string became the mass that defined my private territory. Once shut, I was transported to another space, oblivious to the aroma of my grandmother’s cooking or the noise from the television. Here I wept quietly about events that I could not control, prayed earnestly about things that I feared and pondered deeply about all that I could not understand. It was within these three white gypsum walls that I dreamed about the enormous house that I was going to design for my two elementary school best friends and our families.  My little closet was the inspiration that sparked my passion in architecture. It engraved in me something extraordinary that I will always treasure.