Keeping the bed warm

There is always room for one more at our house – even if we had to put a single bed and dresser in the laundry room to prove it.
While some discuss the perfect family size and spacing, I have always contended that the perfect family size is one more than we already have. Our bedrooms prove it.
Six years after the last child graduated and left for college, we still keep the spare bedroom occupied – if only with cats curled up in the middle of the queen sized bed.
The cats prefer company. They welcomed our son who came to recuperate after an illness and stayed to finish up a distance learning program. For three years I was insured that if I filled the dishwasher and turned it on, it would be emptied out. I did, however, establish the other bedroom as my sitting room and place to hide out and watch TV between overnight visitors.
His eventual departure was still so new that we had not finished moving everything out of the bedroom when I surprised my husband – who was out of town at the time – by agreeing to host two exchange students.
The students moved in and took over my son’s job of emptying the dishwasher. Between exchange students, grandchildren kept us busy for a month. We had more things to do than we had time to do them.
The grandchildren who did not come, wondered when they could come and stay. “Any time,” we said, “we always have another empty bed.” …. even if the empty bed is a mattress on the floor, or the couch in the living room.
We actually had space of a few days last fall when I thought we might have several months of just the two of us. That did not last long. My dad needed a place to winter. We agreed to host him.
We moved the TV to the spare bedroom, found a lounge chair for him, put up Indian blankets and pictures of the Wild West on one wall to remind him of his years in the desert and pastoral scenes and art work on the other wall reflecting his life in the hills of New York as a farmer. The room looked mighty cozy.
He said we had a lot of pictures, sat down in the recliner and clicked on the TV. His daily routine did not include a guaranteed empty dishwasher. My husband and I worked that job back into our schedules. The cats discovered him and made themselves comfortable with him in the chair or bed.
Three weeks after he came, my dad’s health took a sharp decline – he ended up in the rehab wing of a local nursing home a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. Routines shifted again. We visited, weighed treatment options and evaluated his condition and our out-of-town commitments. His over-night visit during the Teris emergency reinforced my siblings’ advice and solidified our decision to use outside help.
Empty again, the bedroom looked cozy enough for a sewing room. I set my sewing machine up in front of the television and decided the bed would do for the occasional overnight guest.
I had plans for that room – plans that lasted long enough to fill up a couple drawers in the desk.
Plans that I willingly put on hold when another son came and filled the dresser with his clothes and covered the bed with his blankets.
Fortunately, his arrival means I don’t have to empty the dishwasher and the cats have someone to warm their bed for them again.


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