All The Beds

Beds are a place of comprehensive history. They’re where most of us are born, many of us die, and quite a few of us are conceived. We have fevers in them, barf off the side of them, talk on the phone, read atop, fold laundry, study, fret for hours, do work, argue in whispers, sing lullabies—all from beds.

But above all, beds are where our bodies do some of the most important work it will do all day under the direction of sleep. The list of that work is long and fascinating, and it all comes about because we drift off to sleep. The bed is a very special place.

I wandered into my son’s room the other day to drop something off. He’s away at college, so I sat for a moment on the end of his bed and stole a bit of silent reflection. I dragged my hand across the end of the bed. So many nights my son slept here. So many nights he must have looked up into the dark on his back assessing the day as a teen or read with a flashlight as a kid (which he did), eventually drifting off to sleep.

I started to contemplate this spot we inhabit for a third of the day. I’ve never given much thought to this space, or to the fact that it holds our daily eight-hour physical repair. Moreover, the sleep we do there is a real mix. It’s restful or arduous. It’s luxurious or painful. It’s full of a dreamy sinking into the sleep state, or a pit of worry. It’s alone or with others, or with pets, books, or stuffed animals. It’s quiet, loud, warm, cold, in dark or light. You get the picture.

And our beds can be in many different places over a lifetime.

One of my earliest beds was in Indianapolis, where we lived after my dad got home from the Vietnam War. I shared this room with my sister, as we’d do for most of our upbringing. Our twin beds sat next to each other with a nightstand in between. Dad would come to tuck us in and, taking turns, give us back scratches while singing songs, namely Danny Boy. I try to imagine what that must have been like for him, singing soft lullabies to his little girls with the sound of war still fresh in his ears and its vibrations still sprouting from his skin. But I only heard the lovely ballad floating through the air, and the calming finger scratching on my back. I trusted the world was safe and so the sleep was full of ease.

Then there was the bed in Factoryville, PA in the half-submerged bottom floor bedroom. The window to my right was high up on the bedroom wall but sat near the ground outside. One night I saw what appeared to be a highly informative TV show about the Abominable Snowman, when I learned the furtive creature was known to stir up barking dogs--a telltale sign you’ve got a yeti on your hands. I’d lay on my back frozen in fear listening to the farm dogs barking hysterically in the distance. I’d repeatedly call my parents down until they refused to come any longer. I demanded for something to be done, or for promises of vigilance in the event the Snowman walked as far as our yard and tapped on my bedroom window with his eerie nail. Sleep in those days in that bed was sometimes fine, and sometimes rather problematic.

There were short term beds while growing up: a bunk at camp, a cot at a sleepover, and the twin beds at my grandparents’ home next to the glowing nightstand lamps. It was there that my sister and I kept our ragged eyes glued to the soft half-lit base of those lamps, waiting in vain on Christmas Eve for Santa to arrive, until sleep eventually dragged us little limp things into its domain.

One girlscout camp bed I recall was a sleeping bag laid on a plastic tarp on a giant grass field with most of the rest of the campers. Each of us had a bag for a bed for one special night of the week when we all squeezed together to experience the magnificence of sleeping under the stars. I can still see the darkness that hung above me that night, and the profound sky, and the secret tears that streamed down my cheeks in the dark.

By the time of that special camp-out, I’d already been sent to the margins of the camp social structure due to the discovery I was a bedwetter. Earlier in the week the counselors surreptitiously washed my bag and returned it discreetly to my bunk, but word got out. Those stars that night had no cares for such matters. They were so impractically beautiful I didn’t know what to do with them, except to thank them for interrupting the sorrow. It was them and me and my cuddly sleeping bag--a pact of buddies who were momentarily impervious to life’s great troubles, and I slept that night despite it all.

But sleeping among my peers thankfully got better. A handful of times my middle school friends and I lugged our sleeping bags into some brave parents’ home so we could stay up the entire night, or most of it, telling stories, laughing in sleep-deprived lunacy, and conducting elaborate shenanigans I wish on my life I could remember. If we only had video—what I would give. Our beds, which were sleeping bags strewn on a hard floor, were never meant for sleep to begin with, so sleep was not even in the picture, or it was briefly, once our exhausted brains had spent their last shred of ability and called it utter quits for a couple hours at daybreak.

Then there were all the beds I tucked others into. From stuffed animals in my childhood bed, to the kids I babysat as a pre-teen in their own various beds, to my youngest sister who I’d babysit sometimes. The little ones in my charge got the same songs I got when I was their age. It felt adult to be coaxing a child to bed when I was not much farther out of childhood myself, but it was the best thing I knew to do at the time--help another person float away into a world that no one had ever reported back on. It was a leap of faith for those little ones, especially if all you had around to wish you luck was a babysitter. They gave me my first opportunity to observe the courage to fall asleep. Sleep’s big ask of us was starting to dawn on me.

My oldest son’s very first bed in the world was a plastic NICU incubator with two holes on the side for easy access. It was warm and busy and cozy and, thankfully, temporary. He showed up a little earlier than expected and this meant he had his own mini throne-bed right out of the gate. I didn’t like it one bit, but I did like the reassurances that everything would be fine and that he’d soon be moving into his own lidless, garden-variety pad. On the day the nurses wheeled him to me in my hospital room for the first time, I didn’t know what to do. Those were my first official moments of motherhood. But I loved him permanently already, so I pulled him out of the crib and laid him on top of my heart, inaugurating what is still my favorite of all the beds my kids ever had: me.

Some beds I wish I’d never known. There was the flu bed in Brooklyn that required reading Calvin & Hobbes cover to cover to survive it. There was the pneumonia bed with its pile of dry pajamas nearby for the change-outs of fever-soaked clothing. There was the Istanbul bed where the thieves accidentally woke me with their flashlight. And don’t forget those post-surgery beds. Not all beds are the cat’s meow.

It took me a long while to figure out how to go to sleep. I struggled with it mightily for a long time, either getting there or staying there. But I have my strategies now and have a fine relationship with sleep. I discovered it’s a partnership. Through the efforts of the two of you, your body gets the rest it needs. You yield your trust to sleep and then sleep takes gentle care of you through the night. I understand now how significant it is to be able to let go of the day.

And yet, there will come times when you just can’t let go. The world can be a very unsettling place, with large and small anguish happening at any given time. If you’re caught in great difficulty, there may be no such thing as letting go to sleep, and for some folks barely a bed. Even if you’re watching such struggle from afar, worries can come, so sleep goes missing. These are the times we wish for better days--for others, for ourselves, for the world. When those days eventually do come, we find ourselves unfolding for the night onto a secure bed with a much deeper appreciation for a deceptively simple act.

Last summer my youngest son and I went up to my family’s lake house in Pennsylvania. I wrote about it here in one of my early posts. What I didn’t mention then was what it was like to fall asleep there. Up on the top floor there are two small bedrooms and an open area stuffed with five twin beds. It was in two of the five beds that my son and I slept, as we’d both done during each of our childhoods, as the house is generations old. After our usual late-night adult conversation, I’d pick my way in the dark to my spot upstairs. I could hear the soft breath of the younger kids already well asleep in the other beds. I’d carefully pull down the covers of my bed and slip in. It was like old times. A gathering of sleeping family all sacked out together in trust, comfortable with each other, sharing a sleep space together. It’s a dreamy place to be, falling off to sleep where there’s a pure nonchalance for worry or concern. After all these years and all these beds, I finally see that sleep is a precious and daily opportunity to be well.

May you sleep soundly, friends.