The Family Bed

You would think that a single woman of a certain (still very young) age who has her own house and her own room would also get her own bed. A nice, not too soft, not too hard, just right sized (a queen, of course) bed all to herself. To read in at any hour, to keep as clean (those freshly laundered sheets!) or messy (those yummy Oreo crumbs!) as desired, to sprawl across or to share (hopefully!) with a selected friend, to wake up in, to an angry alarm, or to sleep late in, to her body's content.  

But last night this woman's bed was not her own. First, at a little after 10, Theo arrived, pitter-pattering up the steep stairs to the Margie-Cave, wandering into my little bedroom, surveying the rumpled sheets, and, in one little hop, landing on top of the comforter, plastered against my (very warm, I guess) legs.  It only took a couple more minutes to hear another set of feet on the stairs -- this time, only two, a little heavier, a little slower, but around the corner they came.  And there was beautiful little Miss Kanha, nowhere near as sleepy-eyed as an 11 year old should be at 10:15 pm on a school night.  She pleaded a sniffly nose -- at least she had an excuse, which was more than could be said for the puppy.  Before I knew it, she had crawled over me, leaving only a few bruises and scratches, dragged the covers down on the far side of the bed, and snuggled in.  

OK, I know what you're thinking, and in fact, you're kind of right.  It's not such a bad picture -- who doesn't love other warm, breathing bodies that you love snuggling up next to you.  Certainly not me.  And it was just lovely, for about two or three minutes, that little cocoon we had all created together.  

But, then, Kanha fell asleep, on her back, with that cold, and the heavy breathing started -- I'm being nice, it was really a snore.  And it went on, and on.  By then I had realized I couldn't turn the light back on to read a couple more pages of my book, The Mindful Woman, because I really didn't want to take the risk of waking her up if she was really sick.  So my minuscule little 10 minutes of reading I covet every night disappeared into the thick air of her snores.

Finally I managed to fall asleep myself and all again was right with the world.  Until, of course, I woke up at 3 am to that familiar feeling of a moist brow and clammy sheets that only a fifty-something woman can relate to.  But this middle-of-the-night came with an added challenge -- my full-sized woman's body had been shoe-horned into one tiny wedge of the bed.  The adorable tween at my side was literally sleeping on my side of the bed, pushing me to the very edge.  And the dog had managed to stretch himself further over next to my feet -- no chance he was going to get left out of the bed party -- so that the only way for me to avoid going overboard was to hang on to the bed's sideboard.  I wanted to scream -- everyone, move over, this is my bed!  I wasn't feeling very mindful.

The Family Bed Minus Mom

But then I took a deep breath and looked at my charges.  Here was my family all comfy in one (not-so) big bed -- the sinewy young lady with the red streak in her just-cut hair, limbs splayed out, at peace, the puppy, on his back (and miraculously NOT snoring), four legs pointed straight up to the ceiling, snoozing away.  I could be tired perhaps but how could I be grumpy?  It sure felt like we were all exactly where we were supposed to be.