The Curtains of Camelot

Story by: Ivana Segvic-Boudreaux

Photos by: Daniella Boudreaux

Thin, translucent, black and white, dusted with decades of memories, they hang.

Drained by years of morning sun, they linger between an external world and an internal lifetime.

Warriors, arrows, lines….

           Spiraling circles, dots, linked hearts…

                      Spears, feminine goddesses, animals…

                                  SHAPES BLENDED…

                                         With various spacings and patters they create the design of a curtained world that once whispered only to me, in my bedroom of long ago.

***

This magical, draped world, now discovered by my daughters, sleeps unchanged for decades in their grandparents’ house.

The girls love the curtains that decorate the bedroom of my youth. Whenever we visit, they sneak upstairs and sit in the spacious room where I imagine they imagine the girl who would one day be their mother. Studying the images, perhaps attempting to travel back in time to have a glimpse at their mother when she was their age.

The curtains have contained this same room since the early 1990s. When we moved into the house on a street named after an enchanted land of knights and legends, my siblings and I selected the curtains we wanted for each of our rooms. I chose the loud, busy, populated black and white design that felt more like art than a piece of cloth whose main purpose was to block prying eyes and sunlight from entering my room.

I spent dozens of hours gazing, peering at the objects that danced around my room. I wondered if the figures were gods and goddesses or simple, ordinary people from some ancient world. Whom or what did they battle, these people surrounded by simplistic swirls and squiggly lines? What did the lines and swirls represent? Who was the artist? What did he or she want me to see? Was I seeing it?

My eyes have aged. Or perhaps the curtains have simply blended into the forgotten past, which I don’t see as clearly anymore. Yet, I still love their eccentric nature and the character they add to the room of my youth. 

Each time we visit my parents and stay in my old bedroom, I travel down a 30-year-old road remembering the feelings of the girl who chose this ream of fabric; a material, which was more likely to be used for an artistic dress than window covering. She was aware of this, nevertheless she chose the specific cloth and design for the curtains, because they would be unconventional, artistic and unusual, just like she was. She fell in love with the curtains, even though the thin fabric had not even a hope of suitably keeping the room dark. Instead, the light boisterously penetrated the bedroom and intensified the shapes, leading the girl into many lands and onto the various paths of her vivid imagination.

***

Today, my three teenage daughters get lost in the same designs in which I would sometimes vanish. When they had first seen the curtains many years ago, instantly, they too loved them. I asked them what it is about the curtains that draws them in, makes them so happy to be in that room and get lost in the swirls and people dancing in the darkness.

“I love them so much because they look ancient but modern at the same time,” my oldest daughter said. “You could spend a long time looking at them and trying to figure out what the people are doing on them.”

My middle daughter found the curtains noteworthy enough to take photos of them — the photos used in this article — and she told me I should write about the Curtains of Camelot. I asked her what makes her so drawn to them.

“I really love the curtains because they are mysterious, and you can kind of imagine what the people in them are thinking about and what they are doing,” she said. “I also really love the design and I can never get bored looking at them.”

My youngest said they remind her of “Egyptian things.” The magic of ancient worlds and folklore.

“When I was still very young and in a crib, it would be late at night and I couldn’t sleep. I would open my eyes and see the curtains,” she said. “They remind me of my grandparents, and they always will.”

Memories… It seems these curtains create memories that travel through generations and through time.

Today I see my youth in their youth, through their eyes. I see the curtains freshly, newly, enthusiastically, yet I too feel the old, familiar feelings I felt when I would gaze at them with my eyes of long ago. The thin cloth separated me from the world on this street named of chivalric romance, castles, kings, knights and the lore where legends live. My life never resembled the legend of Lancelot, but it did awaken the dreams I dreamed. There, reality came to life, for within the creative, gentle cloak of the Camelot Curtains, I dared to dream to be a writer, a wife, a mother and so much more.

I’ve gazed at the world around me, through these curtains. Hundreds of poems, articles and stories I wrote under the shadows and watchful eyes of these curtains. At times I hid from words, behind these curtains. But mostly, my love of words blossomed and grew in the cover of these curtains. I dreamed of the world, surrounded by these curtains. I separated from sadness, within these curtains. I delighted in happiness and love, framed by these curtains. God heard my prayers and whispers echo among these curtains. And today I watch my children grow up with their own tales and dreams wrapped in the history of the Curtains of Camelot.

Story by Ivana Segvic-Boudreaux. Photos by Daniella Boudreaux