The View From Planet Kerth: Mom was right all along
“Make your bed,” Mom said every morning, immune to any common-sense argument I might offer: “But Mom, it’ll just get messed up again tonight.”
“Make your bed.”
“But nobody’s gonna see it except friends who come over, and they don’t care.”
“Make your bed.”
“And if anybody else comes over, they won’t see it if I close the bedroom door.”
“Make your bed.”
“But what if I want to take a nap?”
“Make it again.”
She didn’t even offer the courtesy of explaining why I should make the bed — like all those millions of Asian children who would love to have a bed to make every morning and then rush to the table to eat the brussels sprouts I surreptitiously fed to the dog under the table.
No, it was just: “Make your bed.”
And so I made my bed. Every morning. Grudgingly. Convinced it was the biggest waste of time ever spawned in the mind of humankind.
That’s why I was surprised to learn, decades later, that making your bed every morning can be a lifesaver.
It was eight years ago, just after my wife suffered her first stroke and spent the next 31 days in the Intensive Care Unit. One of her therapists asked me how I was doing, and I admitted that I felt overwhelmed by the whole experience. Not only did I now have to assume all the duties that we once shared between us, I also had daily visits to the hospital, followed by caregiving duties at home that exhausted and confounded me. “To be honest,” I told the therapist, “sometimes it’s hard even get up in the morning because I don’t even know where to start.”
“Make your bed,” he said.
I stared at him as if he were poking fun at me, but he explained: “Sure, there’s a lot to do,” he said. “More than you can do in a day, or a week, or a month. But it’s not that any of those things are hard to do. It’s just that there are so many of them. So just start someplace and do one thing. And then do another. And another. And at the end of the day, don’t worry about what you didn’t get done. Those things can wait until tomorrow. You can do them then — after you make the bed again.”
Of course, some details needed immediate attention, but for most things it didn’t matter much if I did them first or last.
“Except for making the bed,” he said. “Do it even before going to the bathroom or brushing your teeth. That way, your first decision of the day is already out of the way.”
I took his advice, and I felt my depressed helplessness loosen its paralyzing grip on me at once. Besides, now that the bed was made, there was less chance that I would retreat to it during a weak moment later in the day. It was easier to keep going than to rumple the bed and have to make it again.
In time, I came to realize that making the bed first thing in the morning was not just a practical chore — it was also a metaphor.
Because, let’s face it, the world is a messed-up, broken place. So why not make your first action of the day a gesture to restore one ragged edge of it back to some semblance of order?
Oh, you won’t be able to fix the world utterly. Not in a day, or a year, or a lifetime. The world will keep breaking, and you will be part of the reason that it will break. You’ll rumple that bed again tonight.
But tomorrow, first thing, you’ll fix it — or at least restore one small part of the damage to how it once was. And your day will begin with one small triumph over the world’s maddening tendency to keep breaking. Because it’s not only about fixing a broken world. It’s about fixing your despair over all the damage.
And now that you’ve taken that first small step, you’ve got a bit of momentum to cancel the inertia that had paralyzed you. Take another step, and then another. The bed is made; you’re on your way.
That advice carried me through the eight years of caregiving for my wife’s disabilities. And when she died this February from a final, fatal stroke, I awoke the next morning paralyzed by grief. My caregiving chores were over, but I now lay at the start of a new, unknown life, filled with new responsibilities I had never had to address — an endless list of necessities involving the funeral home, insurance companies, Social Security office, bank accounts, will and trust titles, pension administration …
But I didn’t lie in bed for long that morning, because I knew just where to start.
Today, some three months farther on, most of those necessities have been handled, though not all of them. I’ll tidy them up some other day. Right after I make the bed.
You don’t have to lose a loved one to feel despair, because the world has a maddening ability to break in a million ways. School shootings, global warming, lying politicians, impending wars — the list is endless, and it can freeze you into believing that you are powerless to do anything about it. But you are not powerless. You can’t stop the world from breaking, but you can stave off despair by taking one small healing step every morning, and then see where your next steps lead you.
And once the bed is made, keep going. Resist the temptation to climb back in until you tumble into it tonight and mess it up once again.
Then sleep sound in the knowledge that tomorrow you’ll have the strength to help fix the world just a bit more, because you’ll know just where to take your first healing step: Make your bed.
The author splits his time between Southwest Florida and Chicago. Not every day, though. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Why wait a whole week for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Get T.R.'s book, 'Revenge of the Sardines,' available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine online book distributors.