Co Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Lately I’ve been squeezing into bed.  This is different than the familiar squeezing into last year’s jeans or squeezing into a packed church service already in progress.  It’s even different than squeezing in grocery shopping on my lunch break or squeezing one more bill payment from last week’s paycheck.  It’s actually quite easy to squeeze into bed but much harder to fall asleep with two young children who become all elbows and knees after dark.

I have only moonlight to guide me when I slip into my bed and between my sons’ slumbering bodies.  (Months ago, I foolishly believed that one night of co-sleeping could be just that--one night.)   I try not to disturb them as this is the only time they have been quiet and still in fourteen hours.  Without fail, I begin to think of a family that lived one hundred years ago.  A family I knew only through the stories my grandmother told. 

There were eleven children in that family.  They slept four to a bed in a wood frame, two story house in northern Minnesota.  When I squeeze into bed these days, that family is never far from my thoughts.  How did they manage?  Northern Minnesota winters....  Eleven children on a miner's salary...  The children shared pairs of shoes that they wore only to church on Sunday.  Upon returning from early Mass, the first group gave their shoes to the next group who would attend a later Mass in what I think of as a religious relay.    In the summer they picked wild blueberries just outside of town where, at the turn of the last century, black bears were said to still roam. 

But the image of my grandmother's family that comes to mind most often is that of several siblings sharing a single bed.  It was said that you didn't dare get up in the middle of the night, even if nature called, because your "space" would disappear.  For a while they tried sleeping in staggered rows, head to toes, head to toes.  They soon found that having your nose positioned among your brothers' feet was no way to induce a peaceful slumber.  Then the children tried sleeping parallel to the headboard.  This worked well until their bodies grew and their legs hung uncomfortably over the side of the bed.

 

Eventually, the eleven children grew up to have families of their own.  They bought homes with enough beds for each of their children.  I wonder if those kids tiptoed to their parents' bedroom, climbed into bed on dark, stormy nights and awakened memories of a large family sharing small spaces, huddling together in order to stay warm during long winter nights. 

As for me, three generations later, images of that close-knit clan still dance in my head.  Especially as I lay awake,  moving not-so-tiny legs and arms in an effort to find some sleeping space amidst my own precious family.