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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Bedhead

Posted September 07, 2007
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I'm worried that the bolts are going to shear off -- and this is the expression I keep using: shear off. I don't know where it came from or why I seem to associate it with bunk-bed maimings, but I do. Michael remains characteristically placid while I fret, anxiety dropping all around me like feathers molting from my psyche -- feathers that magically and continually restore themselves to molt again.

"Did you tell the guy at the hardware store you were using them to put together a bunk bed?"

"I did."

"With children sleeping in it?"

"Yes."

Maybe I should get one of those "Baby on Board" signs tattooed onto my forehead. "Oh!" the guy at the hardware store might have said. "With children sleeping in it. I hadn't realized. I thought it was just for regular people. Hang on then -- let me get the other bolts that don't shear off."

It's a beautiful, plain Swedish bunk -- my childhood bed, which we recently retrieved from my parents' attic. Awash in nostalgia and panic, I Google "seventies bunk bed accidents" and get many hits, but none that particularly implicate bunk beds made in the era of beaded headbands and the appliance color "goldenrod." Reading various reports, I find that the most common perils involve falling and strangulation, but nothing about bolts shearing off and the top bunk plunging down to crush the sleeper beneath. (Also little to suggest that a colossal stuffed tiger wedged into the crack between wall and top bunk is actually as effective as a proper rail.)

Ben and Birdy mill around while Michael patiently studies the springs and I slide the decades-old foam mattresses into dust-barrier covers; we've been talking about this bunk bed for ages now and the kids are rosy with excitement. Ben screws nuts onto bolts, and when he says cheerfully, "Helping really makes the time fly by!" I feel like I'm in a play about Mother Teresa's childhood. I keep testing the bed surreptitiously -- hanging from the top bunk, flexing the springs -- and when Michael whispers, "Any bolts shear off?" I swat him.

Then I drive to TJ Maxx to buy sheets and blankets, because what milestone cannot be celebrated, what anxiety not muffled, by a trip to TJ Maxx? But the truth is that I've never bought new bedding before. We've always inherited sheets from my parents, or from the Salvation Army where sometimes you can find ancient cotton ones so thick and soft they're almost like suede. I'm thrifty and disinclined to bring new things into the world when there are so many lovely old ones around. But here I am in line now, with matching twin sheet sets, matching fuzzy blankets, and this matching fuzzy happiness that I can't quite put my finger on -- like it's one of those oddly perfect moments I always anticipated when I was younger: "Here I am, finally buying bedding for my children." Maybe it's something about being able to provide for them, or something simpler about being their mother. "My kids just got bunk beds," I explained proudly to the cashier, my intended nonchalance apparently out for a cigarette break, and she doesn't say, "Wow! Your kids are already in bunk beds!" Or "They'll love this gorgeous bedding you're so lovely to get them!" Or "You have children!" She just smiles and say, "Oh."

And in the flurry of the bolting and the linens and the worry, it does not occur to me that an era is ending. The era of Ben and Birdy sleeping together in one bed like puppies: a tangle of plump limbs and sweet breath and striped pajamas. It's how it always is with endings -- you don't always realize you were enjoying the last of something until afterwards: when you fold up a too-small onesie to give away (When was the very last time she wore it?); when you toss out the empty box of nursing pads and realize that there was one last feeding, one last time that pair of eyes gazed up at you like your face was the very sun shining upon all of creation's milky joy. It's like that now, because only when the kids kiss each other goodnight and clamber happily into their respective berths do I well up with loss.

When I put a weepy head on Michael's shoulder, he says, "Aw honey, should we put them back in the queen bed?" And he's half serious because he can't stand to see me so sad, but I laugh snot all over his T-shirt. "Yes," I say. "Let's. Let's let my sentimentality retard their normal growth and development. Let's make them sleep together until they're grown -- and then let's make them marry each other and live with us forever!" Michael strokes my hair. I do not let go easily, do not move easily forward without ever a chance to dart backwards, even for just a second, to live again in a moment that's past.

Of course, they're only, like, 15 inches apart. I realize this isn't exactly a monumental separation -- and I'm thrilled for them, too. But for the thousand nights we put them to sleep together my heart swelled to see them: Birdy's arm slung around Ben's neck, their foreheads pressed together, their hands clasped even in sleep. I will forget my own name before I forget that.

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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