I have a layered bed. There are two full size mattresses on a futon frame, and a futon cushion on top of that. The confection is piled with pillows and iced with blankets. I feel like a princess when all is in order.

Inevitably, the futon starts slipping off the bed stack, and all must be stripped and piled again.


I have a habit, started at age eleven, of holding a small object in my hand while I sleep. My 6th grade boyfriend Kermit gave me a little wooden heart for the appropriate holiday in 1992, and it was just the right size to hold and feel comforted by, as stuffed animals were no longer quite the companions they used to be. The heart was succeeded by a soapstone bear (from the same boyfriend) some months later. The soapstone bear endured far past the end of the relationship, until I was 15 and at CTY in summer of 1995, where it was supplemented by the Bearing Stone (a shiny bit of rose quartz, tumbled and polished) at intersession and supplanted by the Shoe at session-end. (pyrogenic, the Shoe is still in a memory box back in Fairbanks, tucked in next to my two favorite childhood stuffed toys and other random treasures.) When the Bearing Stone was lost, another polished rock came to take its place in hand (but not in heart). An item signifying my high school flame Shawn came to take the place of the Shoe in due time.

I got engaged, and these things disappeared from my bed. But once in Arizona, and out of the orbit of my erstwhile fiance, the lightsabre that Darkside gave me found its way into my hand while I slept, and it gave comfort. And a large chunk of rainbow fluorite found its way into my right hand.


As I un-piled pillows from the bed for the re-settling, I uncovered no less than four rocks, in various size, shape, and mineral. No wonder my bed's been feeling extra-snuggly!