First, Make Your Bed

 I've been traveling all over God's green earth the past few months, from Greenville, North Carolina, up through Indiana, to good 'ol West Salem, WI, and back down the trail again.  I've stayed with various friends, family, and lrecently, in my future house in Greenville.  Unlike a hotel, every time you stay with friends, you put yourself in a position of morning bed-making (if you're a good guest, as I am). 

For me, making the bed is done first, before changing out of pajamas and showering, before the coffee and sausage gravy and biscuits, before packing up your bag.  For me, it's also a little bit of a fear.  I'll never be able to make it up exactly right again.  Where was that body pillow?  Was the top sheet folded back or pulled all the way up to the headboard?  While clearly, not everyone has the bedmaking anxiety I do, I feel like I've folded back enough duvet covers, arranged enough decorative pillows, and smoothed enough wrinkled sheets to be somewhat of an expert. 

And upon considering my expertise one morning, (while doing none other than making a bed after spending the night at a friend's) I began to ponder where and when I had first learned or been taught how to make a bed.  There were two instances that came to my mind almost immediately.  The first was how many times I had watched my mom make her bed late at night before crawling under the fresh sheets; the folding, tucking, the layers of sheet and quilts and comforters. 

The second memory that came to me was helping my grandma make her bed mornings after sleeping over.  Though it may have only happened a handful of times, each memory of my grandma and I is all the more searing since she has developed the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease and is nearing 90.  Already, some of my favorite memories of our time spent together blowing bubbles in the living room, learning to sing "America, The Beautiful," riding Big Wheels around the block and through the alley are memories that only I remember.  The need to write about them, to make them real, becomes more necessary with each passing day. 

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First, Learn to Make Your Bed

The young girl and her grandma each pick a side of the bed.  She always chooses the side nearest the windows, close to the closet with the stained glass inside.  She loves the brass headboard, it's shine, doesn't see the smudges of her fingerprints, the flakes of rust from the faux-brass finish.  She waits for grandma to bring the sheet to the bed, her pudgy fingers like clothespins, grasping the worn-soft cotton of the floral sheets.  On either side of the bed, they pull the sheet taut, then fling it upwards, front-porch air ballooning beneath it.  Sometimes, the grandma will let her scramble under the sheet as it arcs up, and let her lie until it falls down in bunches on top of her.  Then they will unpack the sheet again, pull it tight and let it parachute to the ceiling. 

When it lands safely on the bed, the grandma's big-knuckled hands will smooth away each wrinkle, bringing the sheets tight up under the two feather pillows.  A sharp crease cut with the side of her palm.  And each layer after that, another covering to protect against the loneliness of the widowed nights.  Each cover like a sigh big enough to fill all the years her husband had been gone.  The young girl watches each gentle swipe of  the hand, each fold and the cutting line of the comforter hanging just so, barely touching the hardwood floor.  She wonders if she will ever have a bed to make, a bed to share.  She wonders when she will learn to make the bed all on her own.


Then, Lie and Die In It

Twenty years later, the big-knuckled girl, who has been making her own, lonely bed, follows around her trainer on the eleven-to-seven shift at the nursing home for nuns.  At night she makes beds.  She makes beds empty, she makes beds occupied.  She makes up beds after they've been soiled, makes beds after they've been slept in.  She makes beds.  She learns how to make beds over again.  Sheets pulled tight, no billowing, no ballooning, sheets pulled heard to the hospital beds, hospital corners, clean, smooth sheets.  Nubby blankets hanging evenly on both sides.  Beds raised up to save her back.  She makes beds high, she makes beds on the floor.  Every night she makes beds.

Her big-knuckled hands turn over the pillow for the fever-flushed Sister.  She hopes it's a cool side.  She unmakes the bed when the fever breaks, throws the sheets on the floor to be picked up later.  She makes the bed with the Sister in it, folding, creasing, unwrinkling as gently as she can.  She makes beds while the Sister suffers cancer, groaning, crying.  She makes the beds they lie in.  She makes the beds they die in.  She learns to make beds, she learns to just make beds.