the bed

When I first moved here, the house was empty, except for a creaky bed and two chipped glasses in the pantry. For a week, we had everything I brought with me (dining room table and chairs, two dressers, a glorious old cabinet, tons of books, my grandmothers china, and some odds and ends.) and nothing else.

(But hey! We could sit on the floor and look at the china!)

Our first big purchase for the house was our bed. It has a high, plain headboard, curved gently,softly, not too frou-frou, not too austere, just...right. I like to think someday one of our children will take it with them somewhere and start their new lives with it.

I have always loved good linens. I usually mix ours up so that there's an unifying color but a riot of different flowers and patterns - some are new and some are passed on by my mother, my grandmother, my great aunt, even a lone pillowcase from the first 'grown-up' set I demanded when I was young and tired of cartoon animals and Holly Hobbie sets.

Quilt or comforter, it changes according to my mood and the weather.

Lately* it's been something I found on E-bay - a utility quilt (I assume that means that quilts of this type were made to not be for best, but instead things like picnics and tossing around Pa's shoulders on his way out to the barn, but I don't know if that means they're made a special way or with a certain fabric.) made with large patches of small patterned fabrics, and then curiously, some large jungle lions and a stop and go signpost. I wish I knew the story behind it - I thought at first it must be an unfinished project that someone's daughter or niece had taken over, but the stitching is fine and uniform and it doesn't look like the strange bits had been added later.

I think this is part of the reason I love quilts and weavings - there's always a reason behind every stitch placed, every piece chosen.

The quilt is a lightweight cover, good for those nights when the air conditioning has been on too long and the room is a bit nippy. (My side is closest to the vent.)

So it's not a showplace bed. It would never be on a magazine cover or foofed up like a catalog. Somedays, it doesn't even get made. But I love it, the quirkiness of it, the way all the different linens say home and family and good memories to me, and I love sinking down into it at the end of a long day.


*Yes, yes, it's July and hotter than heck...B and I both like to burrow and sleep under the weight of heavy blankets and the a/c is set on perma-chill.