How a Family Bed Builds Strong Relationships

Walking through our small town, I stop in a local thrift store just to browse around, killing time. I push open the front door to be met with that familiar, old musty smell of well-worn objects and old books.

Meandering through thrift stores reminds me of the Island of Misfit Toys, the possessions others discard because they no longer fit into their ever-changing lives. Yet, even though these objects do not “fit” someone else, to another person they become an object of delight, even joy.

I survey the aisles, skimming my hand across a rack of jackets, picking up a dish or picture to put it down again and find my thoughts turning to my son Jace for several reasons.

First, Jace loves hunting through thrift stores for that perfect find as much as I do. He’s kind of my thrift store buddy, so there is an element of missing him on this day.

Second, when Jace was growing up I often thought of him as my misfit boy whom I cherished because of his uniqueness.

The third reason Jace is on my mind is that as I walk through the stores’ bookshelves, I spy the children’s book, Love You Forever.

I smile but can’t help my eyes from misting over a little while a lump forms in my throat as I swallow. I’ve found a favorite book from when both of my kids were little, read over, and over, and over, again.

Our copy is packed away in a box inside the garage where the yesteryear resides. But my memories, therefore my feelings, seem like they just happened yesterday.

Carefully I turn over the cover page of the glossy paperback.

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

As long as I am living,

My baby you will be.

Looking around to see if there are other shoppers nearby, I choke back a sob. Who doesn’t cry at this poem? I wonder.

Reading it all again transports me back in time, thinking of my younger self starting out as a mother and Jace as a baby, growing into a toddler, a child, a teenager, and now out on his own life adventure.

From the very beginning, our bed was a family bed. This was partly due to Jace’s erratic sleep patterns, the on-demand breastfeeding, as well as what some people called being a high maintenance baby. Jace happily laid alongside me, content to coo and kick.

Another factor was my sleep deprivation accumulating due to these new changes, but the overriding factor was this new love I felt for my child.

I fell in love.

A family bed provided security and comfort. A place of relaxation. A place of togetherness.

A family bed in our culture is not the norm. Having never been in step with the norm, this did not bother me. It also did not bother my kids. From the onset, they just considered it normal. My bed became a hang-out place and a place of shared stories.

I heard many people usher the warning, “If you let them in your bed now, you will still have a teenager sleeping in your bed later,” or derivatives of this sentiment.

The children’s book I hold depicts a similar mother who rocks and cuddles her child from infancy through all the stages of his life, even teenage-hood until, in the end, he is rocking her.

“I will love you forever” is the sentiment I want my children to carry with them when their thoughts turn to me.

And I want them to remember our bed. All the nights we sat up reading book after book, story after story together until they fell asleep. Our nighttime ritual of bath time, bedtime, and books.

Eventually, Jace did sleep alone, making room for his new baby sister but we always maintained the togetherness of that family bedtime. Many nights cuddled together, in one bed or the other, talking and laughing over the day’s events, and sometimes shedding tears in response to how unfair life can be at times.

As Jace entered the teen years, branching out independently, testing the waters, even pushing the limits of my worry and sanity with various shenanigans, my bed became a nightly sanctuary of even more importance — a soft place to land.

It would start with a soft knock simultaneously rapping as my door creaked open a crack. “Mum, can I come in?” Then the questioning and hopeful glance towards my bed.

A nod from me produced a full-fledged body flop onto the mattress, usually face first. Sometimes minutes would go by in silence while Jace lay prostrate atop the covers next to me. Other times chatter of stories came careening out the instant the bed was hit.

Most of the time these were stories of the day — who said what or did what to whom and of course, a teenage opinion of the world was always thrown in for good measure. I heard about the stresses of being a teenager in one breath followed by dreams of the future on the next exhale.

These anecdotes provided me a window into my child’s life, or at least what was willing to be shared. So, I pulled up the covers around us and propped up the pillows, always settling in with a grateful heart to listen.

Grateful that stories are shared with me, grateful I am sought out, grateful for my bed providing comfort. Grateful for my beautiful misfit boy.

Still standing in the store, I flip the pages of Love You Forever some more. I pause on the page of the teenage boy, with headphones over his ears and the disheveled punk hairstyle. Only a moment goes by as I stare at the picture but years flash through my memory. I see Jace on that page.

Those teenage years when each of us consciously begins the search for our own identity, separate from our parents, even holding our parents at arm’s length. Those first fledgling flights away from the nest only to return to safety. Those difficult years when by all outward appearances it seems your kids dislike your very existence.

But then at the end of the day, there comes the soft knock on the door. “Mum, you still awake?”

Amidst the sheets and blankets, I became privy once more to secrets and the sounding board for processing feelings or random thoughts. Over the years, we read stories together from Goodnight Moon to Little Women to The Hobbit and The Alchemist, allowing these to open channels of conversation or spur ideas. Always snuggled in my bed.

I listened to the joy of first-time love and the sorrow of a first-time broken heart. I stroked strands of hair as the tears came until sleep took over, many times myself falling asleep beside my now-grown child. A gesture reminiscent of those first days in our family bed.

It was then I would remember, how in the early years I worried I would end up with a teenager still in my bed, a teenager who needed me to be that soft place to land.

But I did not understand then. And no one told me how beautiful a relationship that would really be.

Even now, when Jace comes home to visit, as I am about to shut off my light for the night, there will be that soft knock as the door cracks open with the glance toward my bed silently asking permission to come be close for a while.

Now, we talk about gender dysphoria and issues facing transgender people, very openly. But a few years back I was oblivious to what Jace was feeling and these unidentified feelings that were surfacing. I do not know how long he carried them.

Jace tells me now that it was while watching a YouTube video that he first heard and learned about transgender and gender dysphoria. He came away from it with the feeling of,

So there is someone like me, that feels as I do!

An “aha” moment for sure and the beginning sense of inclusion, that he belonged to a tribe and was not alone.

Even on the nights we chattered away together snuggled under the blankets, I was not really privy to these early explorations regarding his gender or his feelings about gender. As open as our conversations could be, I still had no clue.

I believe it was our family bed that laid the foundation to talk freely, to talk honestly. And it was where I learned to listen.

I’ll love you forever,

I will like you for always,

As long as I am living,

My mother you will be.

The book ends with a picture of the son rocking his mother.

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I do not even think twice now about our family bed, for I know it was right for us. I close the book thinking about all the mothers to come who will read it and find solace in that feeling.

If I could give them any advice, it would be to keep your heart open. And just offer them love along with a soft place to land.

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MaryRose