Four in the Bed
By Jenna Brack
@jennabrackwriting
My late Grandpa Don grew up in a farmhouse in rural Kansas with five siblings—four boys and a girl. He had a favorite joke he loved to tell about those early days.
“Four of us slept in the same bed,” he would say, “until one of us got married.”
Then he would pause dramatically, waiting for the punchline.
“After that, there were five of us!”
I actually can’t remember if I heard him tell that joke in person (though I feel confident in my re-creation because I remember him telling lots of jokes, usually multiple times to make sure everyone heard, cackling afterwards as though genuinely pleased with himself). But my dad, who has a similar penchant for joke-telling as his father, relayed the line to my husband and me over lunch one afternoon.
“Oh, I can hear him saying that,” my husband said, laughing. “That’s a good one.”
Since then, the joke has become one of our favorites as a couple, one we repeat to each other whenever we’re remembering my grandpa or just need a good laugh.
“Four of us in the bed, until one of us got married!” we say, already knowing the punchline, enjoying ourselves without even repeating the ending.
But although we love that joke, lately I’ve been wondering: what if the joke is actually on us?
***
One spring morning, I, too, wake up in a farmhouse in rural Kansas. We are staying at my in-laws’ farm, only a dozen miles from where my grandpa grew up. When I open my eyes, the morning light is already draping the room in marigold stripes. With a sunrise so potent, I wonder what time it is. But when I try to sit up and look at the clock, I find myself unable to move.
I am lying on my left side, with my nose pressed into my husband’s right armpit. My left leg, squarely beneath me, tingles, completely asleep. I try to tilt my head up, ever-so-slightly, and see my daughter on the other side of my husband, sleeping soundly beneath his other arm with the scoop of her little nose pointed straight into the air and a pink pillow shoved next to her.
Although I am facing them, behind me I also feel the weight of … someone else. Listening for a moment, I discern that my son is in our bed, too, and is lightly snoring beside me.
This is a queen bed, and I suppose we all technically fit, but only in a way that resembles a shrink-wrapped package of hot dogs. I have the sudden urge to get up and use the bathroom, but there’s nowhere for me to go—at least not without moving a body out of the way first. So here we all are, like the subjects of my grandpa’s joke: four of us in a farmhouse, sleeping in the same bed.
***
When I was a new mom, facing true sleep deprivation for the first time, I became a sort of sleep crusader, desperate to snag a few hours of shut-eye. With my books piled high, I learned new terms like wake times and sleep signals and REM stages. I’m pretty sure at one point I even hired a sleep consultant to write out a plan, though I honestly can’t remember if it worked.
Perhaps I can’t remember because now, my kids are nearly-nine and six, and on any given night, our home still feels like a game of musical beds. We’re sleeping better than we were in those early years (I think?), but somehow, I find the members of my family sleeping in, well, unassigned locations on a regular basis.
My daughter wakes up scared, so my husband goes to comfort her, then falls asleep with her in the top bunk. My son wakes up and sneaks into bed with me, and I discover a head of curly hair snuggled next to mine in the morning. Or, my husband returns to our room in the middle of the night, moves my son back to his own bed, and falls asleep on the floor of the kids’ bedroom. One time, I woke up in the morning and found both my son and my husband asleep on a mattress in the hallway. (I have no idea.)
And I know, I know, we could hire another sleep expert or get really tough and put a bell on our doorknob, and never let our kids wake us up in the middle of the night.
But as my husband and I ask ourselves whenever the topic comes up: they won’t want to crawl in bed with us forever, right?
***
Back in the farmhouse bed, still unable to move, I pull a piece of the floral sheet between my nose and my husband’s armpit (this seems only decent), and wonder how long I have to lie here before I can get up. Thankfully, all those years of having babies fall asleep on me while nursing has grown my self-control. DO NOT WAKE THE CHILDREN is my always-and-forever mantra. Still, I’m restless, and as I shift around, my husband’s eyes slit open.
“Both kids are in our bed,” I whisper. “Can you tell what time it is?”
He peeks at the clock over my shoulder. “It’s only 6:30,” he says—an acceptable time to be awake, but still not when I want our children getting up for the day, if I can help it.
My husband thinks for a moment, then declares he is getting out of bed.
“And wake everyone?!” I whisper-shout. But he is undeterred. Very gently, he pushes his torso up and looks around the bed, assessing the situation like a tactical battle plan. He slowly shuffles himself toward the headboard and wiggles the covers down around his toes. Then, in one fell swoop, he pushes himself up with one arm, catapults over my sleeping daughter, and lands on the floor.
I hold my breath, but everyone stays asleep. (How does he do that?)
Meanwhile, both children intuit his absence and, still sleeping, roll toward the center of the bed, trapping me further.
***
When I was a child, I had a queen bed entirely to myself. My parents did not intend this as a luxury; we were simple people, and they had a queen bed they were no longer using. So instead of buying me a new (smaller) bed, they just moved the queen bed into my room. For many years as a young child, I took up space in that big bed, flopping around between the chipped, golden edges of the bed frame to my heart’s content. The bed took up much of the floor space in my room, covering a wide swath of my coveted, lime-green shag carpet.
You might say I enjoyed having my own personal sleeping space. Occasionally, my dad fell asleep while reading bedtime stories to me, and I always stormed out of the room to find my mom.
“Dad fell asleep in my bed AGAIN!” I shouted, then my mom went to rouse him.
I was not fond of bedsharing. Perhaps this is why in the middle of the night, I never remember sleeping with my parents. That doesn’t mean I never woke them–my mom testifies otherwise, as I had some mean spells of sleep-walking—but I have no memories of this. Instead, I have memories of waking up in the middle of the night and simply … wandering.
During a season when I had recurring nightmares, I wandered up and down the shag carpet of our ranch house in the dark, letting the bad memories wear off until I could go to sleep. Sometimes, I wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cereal, eating a snack before heading back to bed. Or, I turned on my light and read a book until sleep was upon me again.
Even on Saturday mornings after a certain age, I woke up and fended for myself, as my mom had a strict “do not wake me on Saturdays unless someone is bleeding” policy. Saturday morning cartoons and Captain Crunch parented us until at least 10 AM (and we were fine with this arrangement, since we knew once mom was up, we would exchange our cartoon-watching for chores).
Yet somehow, my “I need personal space” child-self has turned into a mom who wakes up with children in her bed. Or, if they do not sleep in my bed, they come running to me first thing in the morning shouting “HI, MOM!” and fighting over who gets to cuddle with me.
And I love it. I do. Except sometimes, when I don’t. It depends on the morning, and whether the hot water for the coffee is ready.
Some mornings, when everyone is piled into our bed, my daughter starts singing, “There were four in the bed, and the little one (that’s her) said, Roll over! Roll over!”
And then everyone rolls over, and whoever is on the end (usually me) gets pushed out.
I’m not sure, but I think this is what writers call a metaphor?
***
Still in the farmhouse between my two kids, my left leg starts to wake up, and I decide to plan an escape route or try the same maneuver as my husband. But when I shift just a little, my son immediately opens his eyes. (GO FIGURE.)
“Morning. Are you ready to get up?” I ask him.
“No, I’m still tired,” he says. “But Mom, look, there’s room for you to scoot over if you want.”
He glances toward a three-inch space between my daughter and me.
I sigh to myself. He was up pretty late; I’d prefer he keep sleeping. Besides, what’s another 30 minutes of lying here in the quiet? I shift a little in that direction, and he snuggles next to me even tighter. Then, he immediately begins snoring again.
As I lie there, smothered between two heads of hair, I wonder whether I am perpetuating a bad habit, or just enjoying the lingering gifts of my kids’ childhood. I really don’t think they’ll want to snuggle with us forever; my friends with older kids say they are hard-pressed to even get a daily hug. Still, from this vantage point, wide awake against two gently breathing (and snoring) bodies as the sun grows stronger, a mother’s mind does begin to wander.
I think of my Grandpa Don, telling his joke.
“Four of us slept in the bed, until one of us got married, and then there were … ”
You know, I’m not really sure I want to find out.
Guest essay written by Jenna Brack. Jenna is a writer, teacher, and celebrator of the arts. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fathom, Every Day Poems, The Sunlight Press, Mothers Always Write, and others. She holds an M.A. in English and lives with her family near downtown Kansas City.