The Custodian's Office

Remember when you were in school and there was a gray metal door with a neat little sign on it that said "Custodian's Office"? Sometimes if you were lucky and were walking by on the way to the gym or library, the door would swing open and while the custodian walked out you might get a quick glimpse of the mysterious room behind that door and a whiff of, well, what? Wax? Cleaning supplies? Dust? But it was never enough time to really get a handle on the place which made it all the more mysterious.

When I was a teacher I used to take my whole class into the custodian's office because it was also home to the kiln. The windows were small and high so the light was dim, but after your eyes adjusted you could see that you were standing in the heart of the school - the place where the big furnace and hot water heater were and probably the fuse box. You could just tell that this room was important to the well being of the whole place. It was always warm and if you stopped for a minute you would notice the soft sounds - taps and groans from the pipes, whirring noises, maybe a hiss or two. And then you would notice the stuff, mostly relics from the past that the custodian never bothered to get rid of: dented oak library chairs, old school desks with chipped Formica tops, maybe a few file cabinets and boxes of old textbooks. There were tools there and rags and machines that didn't make sense.

I've been thinking about this lately because now I have a custodian's office right here in my house. It's a room between rooms in the basement and it also has the furnace and hot water heater. It's warm and full of stuff - relics from our pasts: research papers, a french horn and a clarinet, wedding photos waiting to be put into an album, old letters and journals, a box of stuff from summers working at camp. Because it's also home to our washer and dryer, I've been spending a lot of time down there. And you know, it's kind of nice to spend time working right there where a lot of important stuff is. I guess the custodians have always known this. They've just been keeping it a secret.