Broken Bed

I thought I was adjusting well to this new lifestyle. This one-income, live-in-an-apartment, limit-our-travel lifestyle. Then the bed broke, and I snapped.

Zev, Hubby and I were all piled on the bed, and Hubby started jumping up and down, to the delight of our toddler. I was less thrilled. 

When I first married Hubby, I remember telling a friend that I felt as though we'd gotten away with a spectacular prank.

My exact words were: "Don't they know we're just kids? Don't they know we eat chocolate cake for breakfast and jump on the bed?" 

That bed wasn't even a bed. It was a box spring and a mattress on the floor. To compensate for the lack of actual furniture, I hung two rings from the wall where a headboard would have been and draped a piece of pale green fabric between them. We called it "the swoosh." It was all the furniture we could afford, and it was all the furniture we needed.

To complete the adolescent look, we kept stuffed animals on the bed along with a pile of seven extraneous pillows that I thought added a deceptive height to the whole mess. 

Even after we bought a real bed, after we bought a house and replaced every bit of Ikea furniture in our home with big-boy-and-girl pieces, we still kept the stuffed animals where they were. I thought it was triumph of youthful hearts over encroaching age. But it turns out stuffed monkeys don't a carefree girl make.

When the bed broke, I grabbed Zev and huffed out of the room. Hubby lingered in the bedroom for a minute and then met me in the kitchen. There was a split in the wood. That was his postmortem assessment. A split in the wood that was probably going to go at any time.

But it didn't go at any time. It went now. And now, I feel as though we're back where we were 10 years ago: living in an apartment and sleeping on the floor. But we're no longer those wide-eyed kids awestruck by our good fortune. We don't eat chocolate cake for breakfast. And, clearly, we're too old to jump on the bed.  

The dam that had been holding back my insecurities collapsed right along with that bed frame. What are we doing? Where are we going? Why did I quit my job? How is any of this possibly in Zev's best interest?

I was mad. At Hubby. At me. At first I was so mad, I refused to speak. Then I said a few cruel things that I immediately regretted. In terms of "in good times and in bad," this doesn't even come close to the worst we've seen. It's fixable. A not-very-expensive fix at that.  

The old me would have found the whole thing funny, really. For one, the timing was impeccable. Hadn't I just been warning Hubby not to teach Zev to jump on the bed "because, you know, it could…?"

But I didn't laugh. It's startling to snap/crack/boom onto a pile of splintered wood. It's more startling, still, to find out you're no longer the old you.  

Eventually I apologized to Hubby and helped him carry the bed frame into the garage. He said he'd look for a furniture maker to replace the broken beam, and I'd ask some of my interior designer friends for advice.

That night, as we were falling asleep, he said, "It's kinda fun. Sleeping like this."  

I smiled in the dark at his attitude. He doubts our decisions and worries about our future as much as I do. But he's able to laugh about it. I resolved to do the same.

"Fun? I don't know about that," I said. "But at least now we can jump on the bed all we want."

Comments

[Eliza]

Aw. Great blog - I was looking for ideas on how to fix a bed, and found something better!

[Gretta Parkinson]

So what you're saying is, this whole "what am I doing?", "where am I going?" stuff doesn't go away?

That's worst news I've heard all day.

Except for the time my boss told me she lost all the October reimbursement receipts this morning. That was pretty lame.