THE THINGS THAT COME TO YOUR MIND...

Making beds was the subject of an earlier blog post, dated June 1, 2021, Is Your Bed Made? While lying in bed the other day, contemplating getting up and making the bed, I thought about a memory from over sixty years ago.

In those thoughts of yesteryear, my Aunt Beattie (above left, next to my grandfather, mother, and uncle) was toilet training my cousin Harriet, five years my junior. That led me to remember that my mother told me that on uncomfortably sweltering summer nights in the 1930s, she slept out on the fire escape with her little sister Beattie.

As a child living in an apartment until we moved to a one-family house in 1965, when I was eleven and graduated to my private bedroom, I shared a room with my older brother Stu. I remember carrying on that he had to bid me “good night,” for me to fall asleep. That took some convincing until he got so tired himself, wanting to sleep, he begrudgingly fulfilled my request.

After our niece Marielle wrote in an email that my husband and I were her favorite aunt and uncle, I asked my husband about his most adored aunt. Instead, he named his senior cousin Adley. He felt uniformly positive about his numerous aunts and uncles.

Adley, his much older cousin, gave my husband that added warmth. He never forgot that she was the one who came to school to see his papier-mâché project. At the time, his mother, Adley’s aunt and best friend, five years her senior, was recovering from back surgery.

From those random thoughts, my mind jumped to comments my uncle’s “grandson” made at his funeral in 1992. The grandson of my uncle’s paramour revealed how my uncle taught him about plumb lines versus levels. That had me picturing my father showing me how to tie a piece of chalk to the bottom of a plumb line. Arguably, I would say it was a well-used piece of blue chalk.

I saved you time and found this definition online:

A vertical framing piece, such as a post or stud, is ‘plumb’ when it's perfectly straight, and when a horizontal member has no tilt, it is ‘level.’ The tools that carpenters and homeowners use to determine plumb and level all rely in some way on gravity.

Along those lines, my mind took me to my mother-in-law's helpful suggestion. Before hammering a nail, dip it in soap first to have it go in easier. She said that her father, “Zayda,” a carpenter, taught her the technique. I have a wooden hand plane that Zayda made, which makes me believe he was truly knowledgeable, especially when it came to building.

Combining thoughts of sleeping arrangements with having lots of aunts and uncles caused me to switch focus to my father-in-law. From a family of 14 children, he and his brothers slept three to a bed in shifts. While some worked nights and others were off at school, he explained, they took turns sleeping in the bed.

In her later years, my mother often opined, “the things that come to your mind...” Now, I know the feeling, and it was fun to unleash some things that came to my mind while lying in my cozy bed.

While you may not recall your cousin being toilet trained, and you may not have carpentry tips, you probably can name a favorite relative or two, and surely you can remember your childhood sleeping arrangements. Would you care to share those or any other random thoughts?

You have time to make your bed before you comment. Just sayin’.