Grateful For My Bed

Appreciating the ordinary in the face of destruction

Last night, I climbed into my comfortable bed trailed by a couple of cats who made themselves at home on my legs, and in short order, a couple of dogs who settled into their beds with huffs and yawns. A lamp gave a circle of yellow light. My tablet was propped up on my lap, and pillows were arranged just so against the headboard. This happens almost every day, just like this. My warm covers, my clean feet, the cats with their purrs, the man beside me sleeping.

Last night, I felt every inch of it. The comfort. The warmth. The safety of body and my animals; my things, collected over a long time, giving my own stamp to the room. The padded headboard with its medieval tapestry animals, the duvet with elephants, the Indian miniature paintings on the wall. A particularly beautiful painting I bought to hang in this room, of whales in a starry sky over a single boat on the ocean.

We’re heading toward storm season on the Oregon coast. As a matter of course, we’ve been checking our supplies, making sure there’s propane, recycling the water we keep. Ordinary storm prep. We don’t have hurricanes here, but the winds are fierce enough to knock out the power sometimes. Of course, an earthquake could cause a lot of trouble, too, and we are as prepared for that as anyone can be.

Because of that prep, I noticed the approach of Helene, and the predictions, and it does seem like hurricanes are omnipresent at this time of year. I wondered how it would feel to know a storm like that was coming.

And then, of course, she wrought a wild path of destruction. So vast, so insanely destructive in North Carolina, Tennessee, so far away from the coast. How could any of those people have prepared for all the roads in the area getting washed away? What would even lead you to think that could happen? It would feel like a doomsayer’s prediction, wouldn’t it?

It happened. I keep seeing Facebook and TikTok updates from people who are using a sliver of wifi connection to let people know they’re alive, that they need things.

All those homes, businesses, humans, all that infrastructure destroyed in a single whip of weather. Last week, all those people were living in their homes just as I am living in mine today.

Now, it’s gone.

In 2012, there was an intense wildfire that swept over the mountains into Colorado Springs, where I lived, and burned up an entire neighborhood. It was terrifying and daunting, and what I felt over the following weeks was intense gratitude for the things I didn’t have to miss. I just kept noticing them, things I wouldn’t think to gather up to run away but I would miss. The crystal vase I found in a thrift shop in college. The salt cellars with their tiny spoons, those pillows on the couch, my blue scarf and the dress I keep for special occasions.

Things are just things, of course. As long as we are alive, we can start again, but at the same time, our accrued things are an expression of our lives on earth, that painting, that bedspread, that set of towels. These rooms. Comfort, arranged around us like a bulwark against darkness. In an argument toward making mass destruction of homes a war crime, Balakrishnan Rajagopal wrote, “home is so much more than a structure: It is a repository of past experience and future dreams, of memories of births, deaths, marriages and intimate moments with our loved ones, amid neighbors and a familiar landscape. The idea of home brings comfort and gives meaning to our lives. Its destruction is the denial of a person’s dignity and humanity.”

When I crawled into my bed last night and pulled up the covers to make myself warm, I was acutely aware of how many did not have that simple, ordinary pleasure. I both wanted to deeply appreciate my blessings, and also send out love to those who’ve lost it. I gave myself up to a meditation of gratitude and prayers for peace for those ones who have lost that comfort, not only the refugees of the hurricane, but those who are wandering refugees from cities destroyed by war.

I hope I can remember to continue this sense of vast gratitude. I won’t. I’ll get lost in the ordinary aggravations of daily life. But it does seem like one tiny thing I can do to add grace and peace to the world, to appreciate the warmth of my bed and work toward the same sense of home for others.

I’m sure some of you were in the path of that vast storm, and I hope you’re finding what you need. Check in if you can.

Have you ever been present for some destructive natural event? An earthquake or tornado or hurricane?