Bed bugaboos

The walls around me seemed to be vibrating. It was loud. And, I knew from experience, the vintage chandelier hanging in the room below ours was flickering. I just hoped plaster wasn't raining down on the floor along with the dust.

The creaking, softening bones of this old house under the weight of a new bed was a possibility I hadn't counted upon when my husband and I spent the better part of an otherwise pallid Sunday, staring at the steel-girded ceiling of a furniture store, trying our best to decide on a platform on which to slumber for the next ten or so years of our lives.

We had been there, testing firmness and comfort, cushion and resilience, for hours. Our resolve to be shrewd shoppers melted away as the minutes ticked past lunchtime.

I'm not sure how it happened exactly, maybe all that was needed was the gentle vibration of some new-age magic fingers against the back of our growling stomaches to cajole us into handing over the checkbook and scribbling out several hundreds more dollars than we'd planned.

We waited a week for a truck to deliver the sleep the store's mattress match promise had made.

Not that I had much faith in a pseudo-scientific sleep delivery computer app that rang some bells and blew some whistles, and finally arrived at "Firm for him and Softer for her" out of a grand total of four possibilities.

Why is picking one of them so hard?

I hadn't imagined the dog bolting from the room like a rocket-propelled tennis ball as the bed started to come to life in the showroom.

But I had thought about the cat and the likelihood of one of two scenarios coming to pass: either her being caught in the works, or reducing the new contraption to matchsticks. The latter being more likely.

I definitely hadn't planned on the muted but diabolical childish laughter currently rolling out from underneath the covers next to me as a joy that might revisit us from some bygone era of toddler parenting.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr heralded the smooth pressure of a metal armature raising the edges of our new, "hybrid" mattress. As it folded us in half like a taco, our youngest rolled around in sheets of laughter. 

My heart was warming to this nostalgic return. It had been ages since our son had climbed into bed with us, seeking the comfort of parents.

"Look at this! It lights up the floor! This. IS. SOOOO. COOL!"

Though, the attraction to the novelty of remote control and under-bed illumination should not have eluded my tingling senses of the potential for practical jokesters.

Not to mention the fact that, in the boy's hands, the automatic lift of our new pillow-topped rollercoaster was reaching fun park speeds. 

As any boy below the age of 49 and three-quarters might be positively giddy at the novelty of this king-sized contraption, his father was teetering on the edge of a new understanding.