You Were Just Here

Making the bed in the morning soon after waking is a deeply pleasurable and renewing ritual for me, a direct and physical engagement with the liminal space between consciousness and unconsciousness for my beloveds and me. I love making the bed so much that I was pretty terrible back in the day about teaching or requiring my sons to do it. (I heard other parents talking about their household’s morning routines, the “you can’t eat breakfast until your bed is made” kind of order, and I didn’t get the delegation of the task or the sternness about its completion.) Because: When someone you love with your whole heart has just woken from the sacred space of sleep and they make their way toward the bathroom or the closet and maybe they’re replaying dream fragments behind their drowsy eyes, their left-behind sheets and pillows are still warm from their just-resting bodies. The younger this person is, the more of a fiercely protected creature they are, the scents of their growing heads and limbs lingering; the older this person is, the more a miracle their continued survival is, the warmth of the textiles evidence of their persistently breathing lungs and beating heart.