Bed is holy.
It is where we have come to Earth and where we may ascend to Heaven.
It is an oasis for rest and restoration, a marker for beginnings and endings, a companion of nightmares and dreams.
It is intimacy at its supreme.
***
Around Thanksgiving I traveled to Anhui, China, to visit my ninety-four-year-old grandma. While the trip was nearly spiritual, being with her in the same bed was the most deeply felt part of the whole experience.
The two of us slept under the same blanket.
Grandma kept tucking my feet closer to her head, worried that I could catch a cold.
***
During the first night, we both had to go for the potty chair. When I got up in the brutal cold (as there was no radiator), I forgot to flip back the blanket.
Half a night of heat was lost.
Grandma was very upset, blurting out that I didn’t know anything because I was young.
***
On the second day, we put an electric blanket on, right under our bed sheet.
We didn’t end up plugging it in at night. Either it was not as cold as the first night, or by then I was accustomed to frigidity in the country air.
***
As the night fell on the third day, I noticed that my jeans were damp.
We didn’t know why, and in a moment, grandma started an open fire with hay in the kitchen. She then sat on a stool and fanned the jeans back and forth, left and right, top and bottom around the flames. A few minutes later, my jeans were dry.
The remaining smoke fogged up the bedroom. But fortunately, it dissipated by the time we entered dreamland…
Grandma helped raise me until I was five years old.
I was sleeping with her not too differently from how I did this winter.
Grandma stayed in the same village, and I moved to Nanjing, Boston, Berlin, and now, New York.
I want to continue returning to her, as naturally as I go back to bed.
***
It is not an easy journey to visit grandma. Each way, I ride a plane, a train, then a car for about twenty hours.
Furthermore, this destination will become harder, if not impossible, to reach. Over the last twenty years, grandma’s life and mine diverged. Her way of living is an artifact of my ancestors, quickly disappearing as urbanization transforms China’s rural landscape.
Grandma derives a lot of joy from food. Farming, cleaning, then cooking it consumes most of her free time. As a result, she is very healthy. I am the happiest when I sing jazz, act in experimental theater, and dance contemporary. A day would not feel timeless for me otherwise.
Grandma makes minute calculations in yuans and fens. And she stays sharp from it! I write code to compute prices in billions of dollars. It’s equally essential for my survival.
Grandma greets familiar villagers passing in front of her cottage. I befriend urbanites from around the globe.
The set of experiences and luck I have had means that grandma and I will always see a different horizon. But in the heart of hearts, I know that my dreams won’t be imbued with meaning if I won’t recall what life could have been.
***
Bed is a necessity.
Without it, I won’t be energetic to seize the day.
It is where love manifests itself, warmth dissolves issues, and the inner child finds its protection.
It extends aliveness, ad infinitum.