Bedtime Story

I have this bed that I dragged home both by foot and in the old Ford Escort wagon I owned; the headboard wouldn't fit in the back and be damned if I let anyone else get this treasure.  Everything else fit inside the car, the rails, the hardware, the footboard; the headboard had an immense crack running through it but there was potential.  I staggered home a long half block down the street to the apartment Bri and I were in at the time, carrying this wide, lopsided find.  In heels.

Went back and got the car, and if the tires danced home from the joy of finding a cracked antique, I was   just as pleased myself.  The bed had been in a garage for years, was missing ornaments and had that split.  One of the rail hooks was missing, but it was beautiful, an Eastlake walnut three quarter bedframe which needed a thorough scrubbing.  O lucky day!  Probably the best haul out of the garbage in my history.  I changed clothing and got out the furniture oil and rags; assessment began.

To assemble it, I needed a replacement d-shaped brace for the end of a rail, but where the hell to find one?  The date stamped on the others says June, 1871, so you know Home Depot won't have it.  The Old House Journal supplied a listing for a southern company that would cast a part from whatever you sent down to them; I wrapped up one of the other three braces and mailed it off to North Carolina where indeed, it was duplicated.  And it fit.

A carpenter was able to mend the split and turn new ornamentation on his lathe; another company fitted finials.  The famous and nearby Home Depot cut slats for me, and a pediment that matched the style was found on eBay.  It was like assembling a puzzle when all the pieces were brought together, a tall yet narrow behemoth of deep colors, with inserts of olive wood.  Biggest problem was yet to come, which was finding a mattress in the necessary size; they weren't made anymore and because the braces had to be secured with  additional pieces of wood, the whole computation was thrown off as it was.

The project had built an expense budget that I kept level with artwork I did for people, mostly of their kids.  A couple of dogs.  A house portrait.  Inside murals.  I got it together, but flopped my twin mattress on top, which sufficed and left an area to store reading materials on either side.  It's a handsome thing, this bed, and was used until the day I stood on the frame to get a waggly spider and thus recracked the headboard.  Aughh!  The spider blessed a small god and got away; I flumped down, miserable.

The split was long, and as I had no resources at the time due to college fees, (textbook: $160, are you kidding me?), it was braced and put away until a year ago, when a very kind friend and her husband offered to repair it, using an ample piece of walnut from her Rhode Island uncle's old loom.  All the pieces were now ready for reassembly, but I wanted a three quarter mattress and to special order one to be made was exorbitant, a dilemma until this memory foam stuff appeared.  You order a mattress online, it comes rolled up in a box; you uncurl the thing like a fruit roll-up and wait three days before it expands fully to what it's supposed to be.  It is in the fourth hour of decompressing, and I can only hope, as according to online reviews, that it softens up a bit.  Wonderful! says Jay of Quincy, MA.

So, I am rebuilding the bed and the cats are delighted with the old mattress propped up in the hallway; they climb it like the Matterhorn, run the length and hiss names at each other.  The pediment and crown found on eBay will be refinished, and then I shall sleep soundly in my Victorian Eastlake bed, circa 1871, made by T + Son, as inked on the inner sides of the rails.

Tonight, after three days of blizzard, the sky here is overcast with only a slow flutter of snowflakes idling descending to building ledges, branch, or ground.  Lord knows how any birds survived this bitter cold, they don't hibernate and can only hang on with their tiny feet as the gales blew.  The weather bureau says that tonight there may be sightings of the Aurora Borealis; I've seen them twice in my life.  The first time I was eight years old, and the skies were lit with pink and brilliant blue streaks; the second, I was in my twenties, and saw the phenomena appear as a slow, wavy green curtain.  I would love to see them again, unlikely here for the low clouds obscure the universe, and otherwise, they rarely reach this area.

There is a place in Finland that has constructed glass igloos in order to observe the Northern Lights and stars, for there the Lights are an every night event and were once thought to be the snow cast up to the sky by the tail of a great fox. The Algonquins saw them as fires built by the Great Creator, to show the earth his ongoing love.  Today, the visitors to Finland look up and see the same moon and the same almost-eternal rotation of the stars as I do in my position on the other side of the world.  Magic or science or creation, the crackling static is a gift to us, showing that in spite of whatever travails exist, there are celestial embodiments of beauty to delight in.

This is a cold night, the snow crunches under foot.  I am inside now, and warmed, turning in to silently burrow under wool and quilt.  Imagine a dream before you slip away to sleep, let it rock you to slumber.  Rise up with the morning, meet the day.