The Interdependence of Self-Reliance

Friends gave me a bed. My Mister helped me rent the van and drive it over the river to collect my friends’ bed. The student from Afghanistan with the big smile who lives with my friends grabbed one end of the mattress as my Mister grabbed the other. My friend risked fingertips and bent with me to unlatch the frame of the bed.

We drove off through my city. My friend called when we were down the block to let us know we’d forgotten a cross brace for the bed. We turned around. My friend was waiting by the loading dock. We opened the doors and my friend smiled. “Long time, no see!”

My Mister drove back over the river and I fielded a call from another friend trapped in the belly of a divorce.

My friend’s hitching breath. My friends’ hands. My friends’ offerings. My friends’ voices.

In my parking lot, I walked circles around picnic tables talking to my friend about her upcoming move and the new commute to her kids’ school. My new neighbor hopped over and offered to give my Mister a hand hauling the mattress and boxspring up the stairs. We set up my friends’ bed.

My Mister drew me into arms he says are mine.

Later, alone, I shook open white queen-sized sheets that once belonged to my parents and stretched them across my friends’ bed. I unfolded my pillowcases, the ones I sewed myself from swaths of sunflower fabric blushing with green dragonflies. My great-grandmother’s quilt with its pastel hexagons and fraying green piping drifted down across my friends’ bed. Biggie, my giant white polar bear buddy, settled down on a pillow. He was a gift chosen by my son’s dad and and my former brother-in-law, well before either one was either one.

Afternoon slipped around my curtains. The island blue weave is faded from sun that followed the drapes along my winding road from California to Colorado to New York to here. September light made its way through the treetops alongside the thrum of I-66 to warm my window and spill across my friends’ bed.

My circle of light. My circle of friends. My finding my own way. My finding everyone.

My return to the beginning.

My home.