It started with a bed. Doesn't make too much sense to have the smaller bed from storage sent to the new apartment and leave the big bed in his old bedroom. Don't know when exactly he'll be around to sleep in it again. And the matching big dresser with the big mirror would be much more helpful in his new bedroom than in his old one, holding his old Search t-shirts, his football work out shorts and that Austin Power Halloween costume he was so funny in. That way, I can quit searching for a good deal on a new mirror and also abandon my efforts to find a new dresser for his new apartment in his new hometown.

So I've never moved out the bed of anybody who has ever lived here. As poorly constructed as that last sentence is, the idea of moving a bed out of the house triggering a personal crisis of sorts is even a more poorly constructed idea. But I think that's what's going on.

My own mother suffered her rite of passage crisis when she no longer made sack lunches for all her sons; she missed her boys deeply but didn't fully absorb the loss of their childhood until she no longer made them lunches to take to work in the woods, on the highway and to the mill. I for myself do love a good bed and carefully selected each and every bed my children have ever slept in. When they were old enough, I had their mattresses custom-made. Good sheets and pillowcases and down pillows were and are an entitlement around here and treated with the respect we give our family silver, which has been among us for four generations now. Our bed-making technique was learned at the hand of my Aunt Winifred, who was a Red Cross nurse. Speaking freely and plainly, no one makes better beds than us. I have my grandparents' bed in the guest room. So along with the kitchen and with the table, our beds and our bedroom spell the reassurance, sanctity and refuge of home unlike any other thing around here. The lilacs bloom in spring, the roses in June and the lavender blooms in July. But as long as the dust ruffles skim the wood floors, the duvets are puffy with fluffed up down, and there' s a little light left on nearby, none of that matters. We here love our beds. That's what makes our home.

And now this will be the house with the rooms with small beds. Because that's what works best these days. Small beds. The Christmas tree still glows in the dark and the wind flaps the plastic tarp that protects the dogs' kennels on the patio. It is a dark, starless night that came from a rainy, ashen day. It's hard to know exactly, just how tomorrow will be.

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA