Bed Making in Spring

The afternoon light dapples into the house, the air is still fresh and cool, and I am upstairs making the boys' beds. Paul Simon's Crazy Love is playing through my computer. I don't always make beds; sometimes the boys make them, and sometimes the beds go unmade.

I did overhear Ben say to Charlie, "Don't you like it when Katie makes our beds?" It wasn't an assumption of me doing it, but made me smile as I know that Ben likes nice things (and I'm teaching him to be compulsive about pulling his sheets to be straight at night).

So, as a break from my computer, I moved towards the boys' bunkbed. I've learned to stop the concern for hospital corners on these beds, and instead make the bed from top to bottom... tucking any extra in their fitted comforters. When Ben's looks smooth, I climb up to reach Charlie's.

He decided to move to the downstairs bedroom this winter, but moved back "just to sleep" upstairs; it is a clear parallel to being 11. When his friends visit, they hang out in his room, which holds his clothes and his guitar.

When he sleeps and cuddles, he stays upstairs in his bed full of stuffed animals. Ben has two or three favorite stuffed animals and can be happy with just Corduroy. Charlie has 10 in his bed every night (he wanted the 11th, a husky named Slush, to be there too, but it makes a panting noise when he rolls on it at 4am; Andy said Slush had to sleep out in the cold).

I think about how this sweet boy who is so eager to please his dad has also created a character on facebook named "All the littlest homies," which shows a dark picture of him with a flat brimmed baseball hat and which claims he lives in West Asheville (evidently, that is where the littlest homies live); the homey must have done well on placement exams, though, to still go to Carolina Day School. Andy doesn't know what to think about this "cool" transition. My dad says it's part of being a normal adolescent; I think that he's still eager for us to listen to his newly found hip-hop so it's still Charlie, but with a funny hat. He still has his stuffed animals and wants to read together on the couch.

So I pile his animals on his comforter, straighten the best as I can, and wedge them back on the side of his bed. I stand on the dresser and a chair and kneel on his bed, imagining the moves are part of a complicated boulder problem or a traverse on an exposed ledge.

The song finishes, I climb down, and I feel the springtime on my skin.