Eighteen seems to be a significant number for everyone. Whether it be because you become a โlegal eagleโ at the age of eighteen, or perhaps some like to spend their days playing eighteen holes on a golf course . Eighteen is the amount of places I have lived. My sister likes to say she has ‘sojourned’ at as many places, and I must say, it does add an air of class to an otherwise rather blique chain of events.
If I was in a sour mood, I would say that looking back on it, my life for the most part, has been lived between the packing and unpacking of suitcases. Going from one place to another and starting afresh. Something that puzzles me is the thought of living somewhere new with all the old furniture from the previous place you lived and trying to create a homely feeling with pieces of a past life. In the many places I lived, I also had many beds. And so, a homely and comfortable feeling had to be created over and over again.
When I think back to all the beds I slept in, the memories tend to become muddled with the unfortunate reasons for having to move houses so many times or having to sell furniture so many times. Yet, somehow, embedded in the mess, the first memory that comes to mind is that of my futon. It was my only double bed, and it is the one I remember best. At the time I had been obsessed with cherry blossom trees and insisted that my linen have cherry blossoms on it. With a light, pale blue background that made the intricate, pick flowers pop, my linen was beautiful. It was my favorite. From thinking of this, I have come across memories of my many beds that have made me think more fondly of them than I had previously.
Beds seem to hold a significant place in our lives, especially as children. Scenes from films come to mind of a parent sharing bed time stories with their sleepy child. Crawling into your parents bed when you had a nightmare and waking up sausaged between your greatest protectors, then realising you lived another day to face the monster under the bed. And of course, there are the scenes of praying before you go to sleep.
For me the monster under my bed was actually the bats outside my window. My family used to live on a large property with a huge garden and many giant, old trees, hence, bats. To this day they scare the โbejeezusโ out of me. Though I think I have gotten to an age where climbing into my parentsโ bed in the middle of the night has become socially unacceptable. Practically unacceptable as well; I am too big to fit these days. It would seem I have also gotten too big for bedtime prayers. Even though my parents would pray with me before bed, it is actually my Grandfatherโs bedtime prayers that I remember best. The Arabic rolled off his tongue effortlessly when he used to tuck me into bed and rub my brow to lull me into a peaceful sleep. He had done this since I was a baby. My great Aunt used to say my Grandfather was a lovely singer and he would always deny it, but the way he would recite the prayers sounded as though they were meant to fly on the wind over desert dunes and to the ears of a weary traveller. All these years later, he still claims he can not sing.
Much like my memories of my Grandfather putting me to sleep, my mother also had a set routine for bedtime.She is gifted at reading childrenโs stories. My favorite, to this day, is The Gruffulo. If you have not read it yet, I highly recommend it. My mother read the books with all the different characters’ voices. She would change from one to the other seamlessly and even added accents when we were well behaved; she always had my sisters and I in stitches. In hindsight, she probably shouldnโt have done that seeing as we always ended up more awake then asleep by the end of the story. I know she did it because she loved seeing us laugh.
Before I can recall her telling stories, I distinctly remember falling asleep in my parentsโ bed years before. Like most children under ten, I liked falling asleep on my stomach. So, after I would attack the pillow face-first, my mother would scratch my back. Sometimes, when Iโm blue, I go to her room and ask her to scratch my back just as she used to all those years before. Her fingers tracing shapes on my back would instantly make my worries evaporate, so I could go to sleep peacefully.
Another very fond memory I have with my mother used to take place every few months or so. When I was between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, I would come home from school every once in a while, and rather out of the blue, decide that I needed to rearrange my room. She will probably deny it if anyone asked her, but one of my Motherโs favorite things is moving and rearranging furniture. So, she would always end up in my bedroom helping me move my shelves which I never bothered to unpack before moving them. The truth is, I have no upper body strength, and so, I ran to my mom for help. One time, I decided to unpack the shelves before moving them, and, through a stroke of genius, I put the entire contents of the shelves onto my bed. My mother, witnessing this display of pure superior intellect simply looked at me and calmly said:
โIโm going to sleep, donโt try to move your bed with all of that stuff on it.โ She then kissed me goodnight and left.
About half an hour later I could not manage to squeeze the shelves past my bed in order to get them to the other side of the room. Long story short, I attempted to move my bed with the entire contents of the shelves on it. For the next three years one of the legs on my bed was broken. And I didnโt think that was much of a problem until I threw myself on to the corner of my bed rather unceremoniously after a particularly long day at school and ended up having the bed collapse underneath me.
Some of the beds I had were not nearly as enjoyable. Most were single beds, like the one I had broken. I didnโt mind those, most, I actually quite liked. Then, there were the mattresses on the floor. There were a fair number of those, but still, they were mine, and that was solace enough. There were even a few couches in between. There was one very large bed that I had to share, and then there were smaller ones I had to share. Those were my least favorite. As a result I hate sleepovers, which is a problem, because I have yet to experience a pillow fight with the girls that ends with feathers everywhere.
I also have concerns about whether or not I would ever be comfortable with sharing a bed in the future. One day, not too long ago, I had woken up to my little sister, Malikah, sitting at the end of my bed. She had not woken me up, or made a sound, I had not even woken up to my bed shifting under her weight as she sat down. I woke up without a care in the world, then, when I saw her sitting there innocently, I felt like my space had been violated. She had come in to charge her tablet so she could play games because we had chastised her about waking us up too early on the weekends. Yet there I was, livid. Immediately I felt as though I had not slept the entire night. This was an enormous problem for me, even though it may seem like an overreaction. At the time, I had just started to sleep in my own bed and in my own room again after we had moved houses. It was a Godsend to say the least. I had started having less scarring nightmares, and they would come less frequently. So, looking back at it, my reaction had been completely understandable when considering the circumstances. I felt like a monster for thinking, even if it was just for a moment, that my sister had done something wrong. I never spoke to Malikah about it, I just said good morning and got out of bed. I am sure that, in itself, says something. But then again, part of me has nightmares about not fulfilling my dream of having 3000 thread count, Egyptian cotton sheets, so perhaps I should not take things so seriously, especially seeing as they don’t exist.
Take it from a person who knows beds, Egyptian cotton sheets should count as a contributor to healthy living. That, and thick, heavy fur throws. Not real fur (#saynotoanimalcruelty) but the very convincing fake animal fur that will have the animal cruelty activists waiting to drench you in fake blood. That is definitely the good life. My mother and Father had a blended brown-grey fur over their bed. When I was 15 and got my tonsils removed, I spent ten days wrapped up in that fur blanket. During that time I am fairly certain I resembled some sort of midget yeti sub species that somehow wound up living in South Africa. The genealogy of this is beyond me, though I do sincerely believe it is a very apt description. That fur moved with us from one house to the next. In a way it reminded me of the better times, the more financially stable times. Buying a fur is not light on the pocket, and I know in my heart that it had been something both of my parents had probably dreamed of having since they were newlyweds. Neither of them grew up rich and thinking about it as a young adult, someone who will have to pick my own linen and furniture someday soon, I can honestly say that the image of a fur throw will be one that I will work towards. That, coupled with Egyptian cotton sheets is going to make dreamland my favorite place.
Egyptian cotton sheets aside, I do have other dreams concerning beds. I sincerely believe that with my experience of all these types of beds, I could consider working as a bed reviewer for hotels all over the world. It is a completely untapped market. I could even offer my services to hotels in return for a few days in each exotic location the hotels are placed. In all seriousness, travelling to places all over the world is a dream that has come as a result of these unfortunate circumstances. One of the best feelings is to come back to the hotel after a long day at the beach. Half sunburned and three quarters of the way to sunstroke, slipping into the crisp white sheets and feeling the cold that clings to them soak your irritated skin. Feeling your head drop onto the oversized pillow and letting out an overly dramatic sigh of relief is like nothing on Earth. Eyes closing as your head sinks into the fluffy pillow. I have yet to feel anything like it. I was privileged in this regard for a great deal of my life.
I have come to realise that, while having as many beds as I have had, in as many places as I have lived has caused me some difficulty and pain, I am still intact, barring some never ending lower back pain. So, why be afraid of travelling to new places and finding the only accommodation that is available is in a rural village where it is custom to sleep on mattresses on the floor? It wasnโt unmanageable the first time I did it, so why not have a more hectic version of Eat Pray Love? Some may argue that the germs on hotel sheets will have you worse off than the mattress on the floor. But I like to put that little discourse in the back of my mind when staying at any hotel. Moreover, it is always nice to stay somewhere that saves you the trouble of making your bed. The satisfaction of walking into a room with a made bed is unparalleled.
In South Africa, it is not uncommon to hire someone to help around the house. Long ago in a time far away they were called โmaidsโ but we, in the new age, have deemed that word to be inadequate. It gives off too many โbad vibesโ. The term used is โdomestic workersโ and there are many people hired around the country in this capacity. My family always employed someone, and so, I did not have to make my bed until much later in life. The first place I can recall being required to make my own bed was at my Great Auntโs home where we had lived for quite some time. I was sixteen.
Aunty Shirley was very particular in her behaviour and had a set way of doing everything. Making beds was not excluded from the long list of things she liked done in a very particular way. It is no surprise that it took her a few weeks to teach my sister and I just how we should let the blanket fall, so it covered the whole base of the bed and was just the right length from the bottom of the bed to the floor. She showed us over and over again how to place the pillows because she liked the blanket to fold over the pillows. I still can not say that I understand her peculiar manner, though I do know that getting up and making my bed the way she had taught me everyday, after not having to make any bed for practically my whole life, offered a stable and familiar structure in which to do things. When I would make the bed that I shared, while she was in the room watching over my shoulder, we would always discuss things, matters of life, so to speak. Mostly it was me asking her questions because I loved to hear her talk. Those are the memories I have held closest to my heart since she passed on.
Living with Aunty Shirley definitely prepared me for living on my own. Somehow, she had managed to drum the very basics of keeping a house into my head during the two years we lived with her. This only became apparent when I went to university. I was quickly forced to employ the wisdom she had imparted to me. First, I bought a feather pillow. Most Important. Then I bought a fluffy yellow blanket and sheets covered in green leaves. It was the first time I had lived on my own, and in my dorm room there was not much space. Inevitably I ended up picking up some college student behaviour, which means I spent most of my time in bed. I even studied in bed. Some things never changed though. I woke up every day and made my bed the way she had taught me. When I would read books, I would imagine my mother was reading them to me with her many funny voices. And before I slept, I would read my prayers in Arabic, remembering how the words used to drip off my Grandfatherโs tongue like honey. Things I still do to this day.
These memories did not always come about as a result of stellar circumstances. For instance, my parents got divorced when I was eleven, so even if there had been bats outside my window, I would not have been able to jump into my parentsโ bed and wake up between them. My mother would read bedtime stories mostly to my younger sisters, but because we shared a bed, I was there as well. And when I used to move the furniture around in my room it would be after spending long days at school because I didnโt want to be at home. Then I would move furniture so I didn’t have to sleep. This is simply life.
Everyone that has grown up was once a child that knew the feeling of having to deal with circumstances beyond their control. And once we grow up, we become part of someone else’s unfortunate circumstances in one way or another. That is the part of all of this that is truly heartbreaking. You go from dreaming of cherry blossom sheets to wondering which detergent to use on the sheets. All the while reading fewer and fewer bedtime stories in funny voices. Most significantly, you have fewer people to say your bedtime prayers with and eventually you have no one at all. But still, you make your bed, turn the lights out and have to carry on all over again. So perhaps all we do have once we grow up is our bed, and, as you’ve seen with this story, even that is uncertain.
And another thing 