Piece of Me

It looks like pretty much every other canopy bed you can find. Nothing too special, but it's pretty enough. In the end of 2003, I had been through a ringer and wanted to make some kind of attempt to steady myself. Prove to myself that what I needed most (stability and ability to make my life come to heel) was inside me all along. But lets look back at 2003 in summary, shall we?

On April 8th, 2003 the bad year for me began. Some of you may realize that this was my 23rd birthday. That morning, my bed caught fire due to the overuse of an old heating blanket. It destroyed my bed, and I ended up sleeping on a terribly uncomfortable water bed for a few months. This will come in to play later.

In July, I lost my brother and my maternal grandmother within three days of each other, a change that sent my finely crafted world of denial into a tailspin. It culminated in me deciding to leave my abusive marriage and choose a life by myself. What I didn't know is that this was the first time I would be forced to give up everything.

My car, the beautiful dishes my grandmother had given to me, and several other small but personally valuable things that got hauled off in boxes by the ex that I never saw again. If they were my price to pay to be free of him though, then I would begrudge it (except for those dishes. If I ever find those again, I will never part with them.)

Shortly after regaining my freedom, I lost my job. The plant I worked at shut down and I spent a bitter winter on a picket line, living like a hobo in the snow around a barrel fire, protesting my job being shipped to Mexico. I earned half pay rate doing this, and eventually when my tax return came in, my mother took me out for some retail therapy. It warrants mention that the ex took the waterbed with him, so I was sleeping on the couch.

That's when I saw it, the bed she knew I'd fall in love with. I blew half my refund on it without a single iota of regret. We bought black mosquito netting and draped it over the canopy, and mom helped me to braid it around the posts so it looked like some Bollywood inspired maharajah bed. I bought the entire set shown in the picture: vanity, ettache, end tables and even the bench that went at the foot of it (not pictured).

I loved my bed. My girl friends came over and flopped onto it, laughing that it was like the bed of a princess or some foreign queen. Every time I saw it, I got to have that moment of "I did this. Despite it all, I did something nice for myself."

Fast forward to the winter of 2008. The bed had, due to space constraints, been disassembled for about 6 months when we lost the house. I have other entries on what that was like that go in depth, but I must needs touch on it again here. We had to pack up a two story, three master bedroom farmhouse to move to a small, three bedroom ranch style house. I'll do the math for you: we had to get rid of a lot.

Our family heirlooms went off to local museums (including the tatted lace my great grandmother made), and I gave away or sold roughly 25% of the things that I thought other people might want. The rest was exploded around my bedroom in piles. No organization, just chaos and what looked like my entire life strewn around the room. I had a set amount of boxes, and I grabbed what I thought was important.

But it's a hard road to walk. We were emotionally shattered to begin with. Everyone was to the end of their rope. Tempers ran hot, tears flowed freely, and not one of us managed to make it out with scars. I remember very clearly being tired. The heat, which was moderate at best in the drafty farmhouse, had been shut off. The lights had been cut as well. It's a mid afternoon in the dead of winter, so the sun is already thinking about setting and I stood shivering in my room. I could see my breath.

This didn't feel like a home anymore. It was a cold and cruel replica of a room that had once made me feel safe. It was empty and devoid of it's soul. There were boxes scattered around, half full, books laying in piles unsorted. Clothes were everywhere, shoes dumped in the closet. I hit my wall at that moment. I knew my bed was around here somewhere, mostly disassembled. My vanity was one of the first things on the truck, and I'd packed it carefully and lovingly. The rest sat in that room and I wept because I knew I just didn't have the energy or the space to take it, but I didn't want to leave it.

I turned and walked out of the room. Whatever I left, I told myself, I could find again, when my life had changed and things had settled. My lesson in this was to let go, again, of what I'd rebuilt. It's painful even writing this, and the lump in my throat tells me the wounds are fresh enough still to bleed when poked.

But life can be funny. It can sucker punch you one minute, and then turn around and give you a miracle.

Life did change for me. I got engaged, and moved to Boston (the vanity made that trip too!). Slowly and surely I rebuilt what I'd lost. Most of the stuff I gave up is forgotten. I know I'll never get my actual sunflower dishes back, and I know the books I had aren't in print anymore. I don't know that I can even find them on sites like Amazon.com.

But I did find my bed. Out of curiosity I went looking and I found it, and to my surprise it costs half of what I originally paid. I thought about it for a while. Did I still want this bed? Is this just me feeling insecure? But I do still want it, and it's not borne out of anything but the desire to have back the things I miss the most.

This morning, I took the topic to my husband, the Mad Scientist. It's hard for me to ask for this, not because I think he'd have said no, but because it was something *I* bought, for *myself*, way back in the day. Obviously I don't make what I used to. I don't even make half of what I used to in a good week. But even knowing that if I asked for this bed, it would be as a gift from him, it doesn't devalue it. In fact, it makes it even more special because he does know what it means to me.

He knows what life has been for me. He knows how tough it got. And his desire to repair and rebuild with me is one of the reasons we work so well. He has given me back my bed. He's given me back this piece of me that I lost. For no other reason than because he loves me, and I don't think he knows how much sting he took out of the events of 2008 in this one act alone.

And I am doubly blessed.