Space was something that I and my family always craved. I love my family and I enjoy their presence, but now I always avoid sleeping in the same bed with my father during packed family gatherings.
In fact, sharing the bed with someone in a non-romantic way is something that I don’t enjoy very much. But it didn’t used to be like that. Back in my childhood, there was no other way around it.
And even if we didn’t share the bed, as I later on had my own extensible armchair, we shared a single small room all the time. There was no other way since one room was all we had.
I was born in one of the most notorious neighborhoods in my city, if not the whole country. The building we lived in was a gray, reinforced concrete, Soviet-style building. You know, the type that could easily be turned into an anti-atomic bunker if you sealed the windows and doors with some bricks and cement.
The whole neighborhood was populated by a sea of gray buildings. Maybe I’m nostalgic and subjective since it was my own crib, but not everything was as ugly as it looked.
Every time I came back from a few months of vacation in the countryside, there was a tinge of fresh paint over it, a few renovations here and there, and cheerful friends waiting for me.