The Gathering Place

My mom reading to Trevan in her bed.

If my mom was alive she would not appreciate these pictures of her being posted for all to see, (she would say she looked like the Wicked Witch of the West) but I took this picture because it shows something special to me.

In most homes the common gathering place is a kitchen. My dad’s most common statement about a kitchen is, “why do people buy and build homes with such small kitchens?” My dad added a bigger kitchen on to our house when I was in college, and he often says, “we have couches in two rooms of this house, but everyone ends up standing around in the kitchen.”

In my home growing up, and up until my mom died, we had another gathering place, mom and dad’s bed. It’s a small double bed, (small in my book, but perfect for their little bodies), but there was plenty of room for us girls to gather together to chit-chat with our parents. The brothers weren't part of this ritual for some reason. I remember once my parents bedroom door was part closed, and my oldest brother Jeryl asked a question through the door, we told him he could come in, and when he did he looked kind of uncomfortable like he didn't belong there or something, it was pretty funny. I was thinking about this recently, and it’s funny that a bed can bring back so many memories.

As a young, scaredy-cat child, my parent’s bed was a place of refuge for me. When I woke up in the middle of the night, where did I go? Straight to my parents bed (except for the times when I stayed in my bed and called for Dad. The boogey man might have gotten me had I ventured down the hallway...). I always went to Dad’s side first, but on the rare occasions I couldn’t wake him, to mom’s side. When I was really scared, I climbed in-between them, where I felt the safest. As a scaredy-cat teenager or adult, my parent’s bed was still a place of refuge for me. If I ever spent the night alone in their house I would sleep in their bed with the phone next to me, and lock their door. I think it was only within the past few years that I stopped doing that. I guess that’s where I felt it was the safest.

I remember staying home from school sick, sitting on their bed, and mom giving me a small plate of applesauce with my pills crushed up in it. I also have so many memories of sitting on their bed watching or helping mom fold laundry, and she did a lot of laundry (usually my job was to help match dad’s socks).

I have even more memories of talking on the phone in their room sprawled across their bed or sitting on the floor leaning against their bed. Back then, we only had two phones in the house, and neither was cordless, so our telephone conversations had to take place in the kitchen or mom and dad’s bedroom. I distinctly remember taking that first phone call before our first date with my boyfriend in high school. He called while I was in the shower, someone came and got me because they knew I would be mad if they didn’t, so I stopped mid-wash and sat on the floor against my parents bed with a towel wrapped around me, suds still in my hair, dripping on the carpet while I talked. I also remember the giddiness that ensued afterwards. I think back to the summers, and I can picture us talking on the phone lying across their bed. Mom usually sat on the edge of the bed with her back against the door while she talked, Marianne or I would sprawl across their bed and talk, and talk, and talk. Later on, the door would be shut, and you could often hear this while talking, “MAKE SURE TO ANSWER THE BEEPS!”

I’m not sure when my sisters and I started this, but we had a habit of congregating on mom and dad’s bed in the morning or at night, or just whenever. Maybe it started way back when, when my parents came into our rooms and talked to us when we went to bed. Mom asking what we learned that day, or to name one nice thing we did for someone that day, or one nice thing someone did for us. Dad would try to crawl into our rooms to scare us, or come in and tell us his distorted fairy tales. Maybe once they stopped doing that, we started going in their room, I don’t know. I remember hearing a quote once, no idea where it came from or who said it, “If you talk to your children when they are younger, they will talk to you when they’re older.” Maybe that’s what happened here.

When coming home to visit from college, and especially at Holidays, when my parents went to bed, we followed them. We hung out on their bed, talking and laughing, until dad usually pulled the plug by announcing he would be putting on his night gown and unless we wanted a show, we had better get out. Or something like that. (And, yes, a night gown - one of those men’s sleep shirt things, I’m telling all the family secrets.) Sometimes, we would end up back on their bed even after that. In the mornings when we woke up, the first place we’d go was their room (mostly just the years when my mom had cancer, before then she was out of the bed a lot earlier). We’d sit and chat on the bed, and when there was more people in the house, it almost seemed like it wasn’t time to move until everyone had joined us on the bed. It was also nice because if our kids would wake up, they instinctively knew to go to Grandma and Papa’s room (or because we wouldn’t get out of bed, they went to where they knew someone would pay attention to them.) My mom would entertain them while we slept in (sleeping in is 6:30 or 7am in my family, Trevan used to wake up at 5:30). She would read to them, let them play with her jewelry, or other little trinkets she had in her room. Eventually, we would join them in her room. Even when mom came to stay with us when Trevan was born the chit-chat on the bed ritual continued. The night before I had him, I laid on her air mattress (a large feat for a large pregnant woman) talking until she kicked me out, because she said I needed to get my rest in case I was in labor (which I was, I had told her I was feeling funny. I woke her and John up a few hours later.). Sometimes at their house if it seemed everyone had disappeared downstairs, you would know to look in my parent’s room, if they were there on the bed talking, I’d feel like I had been missing the party.

Even in college my roommates and I often had a tendency to pile up on each other’s beds and talk before retiring to our own. I remember one roommate we had to kick out of our room a lot so we could go to bed. (Any roomies want to make any guesses? Hint: the three of you that might know have yet to comment on my blog.)

It seems silly that a bed can have such significance in someones life. But, maybe it is that safe feeling of being close to the people you love while starting or wrapping up your day together that makes for these bed pile ons. I don’t ever remember leaving a bed pile on at home or in college and being unhappy, or mad. They were not places to fight, they were places to discuss, reminisce, laugh, or cry together. Maybe they were our therapy sessions, instead of a couch, we had the bed.

After my mom died, going upstairs and sitting on my parents empty bed was very emotional. I can’t remember if it was before or after my mom died, but she was in the hospital, and I decided to straighten my parent’s bedroom, and one would never think making a bed would be so sad. I miss not having those late night or early morning chats sitting on their bed, and I’m sure my dad misses us there too, even though he pretended to be put out sometimes that we were delaying his shut-eye time.

Before John and I got married he talked me into buying a king-sized bed. “So there is enough room for all of our kids,” was his reasoning. Now, he hates the bed, and wants a smaller one. I say, “No way!” There already isn’t enough room when we have little visitors show up in the middle of the night, or when Trevan climbs on the bed in the morning to wake us up (one of my favoritest things ever). There are definitely those times when the kids end up in our beds that I wake John up to take them back to their own beds, but usually when I hear Trevan shuffle in our room in the dark, or when Mallary is sick and can’t sleep, I welcome them with open arms, just like my parents did to me.

I guess I’ve started my own little gathering place.