December 31, 2009

December 17, 2009

If I had a bed, I would be so happy. Every night, when I went to bed, I would slide under the covers and think, Thank God I have a bed. I would remember when I didn’t have a bed. I would turn to my husband, next to me in the bed, and say, Darling, do you remember when we didn’t have a bed? Doesn’t it seem so long ago? Have you forgotten what it was like? And he would say, I remember it was terrible. I am so happy that we have a bed. Then we would kiss, in our bed.

I would dream, and I wouldn’t dream about not having a bed. I would dream about being chased and hounded, but that would not be about not having a bed. When I woke from the dream, short of breath, I would remember our first bed, the bed we bought abroad, at the same time we bought our car. The bed was bigger and more expensive than the car. We walked into the store, we saw the bed, we sat on it, we bought it. It was delivered to our apartment up the four flights of wooden stairs, lit by the skylight, that circled the elevator. We didn’t do this, men did this, men brought it up, sat on the floor in our bedroom and put it solidly together.

When the heat was broken, I lay in the bed. When I was pregnant with Henry, my legs cramped in the bed. After I had Henry, and we brought him home, he lay between us in the bed at night, or he and I napped on the bed, on sunny late afternoons, waking up soaked in sweat. I took his picture on the bed.

Then we moved, and the bed moved with us. Each place it went, the bed lost something—a peg, a screw, a bracket. We knew the bed was breaking. We still slept in the bed. We still kissed on the bed. We still rolled the children around the bed. Until it broke. Now I am sad that our bed is broken, and that we don’t have a bed. All I have to do is buy a new bed, and I won’t be sad about this anymore.

December 1, 2009