A Bed of One’s Own

230 Marbles
I give you this to take with you:
Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can
begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.
Judith Minty, "Letters to My Daughters"

    Tonight, a girlfriend helped me move out the old bed that Ex-man and I used to share.  Yes, it should have been done marbles ago, but my bed (which has been stored in the garage) is a four-poster rod iron bed - very heavy.  (I don’t think my friend had any idea what she had volunteered for when she offered to help me resurrect my old bed from the dead.)  
    Getting the conjugalish bed out was easy.  Getting my bed in was a chore. It took us a great deal of muscle and some help from my inner handyman.  When we finally had it assembled and cleaned , I looked around my room with new eyes.  I decided that I needed a full-length mirror for the corner.  I tidied up my sandy candle-table (the one I designed after frequenting Greek churches).  I lit a candle to my jade Ganesh – the remover of obstacles.  I dusted off the photo of my Dad in front of the airplane he once navigated.

    Once my friend had gone home, I made my bed and I lay in it, feeling pretty good about where I am, 135 marbles post breakup.  This bed was the first piece of furniture that I ever bought for myself.  It is my independence bed.  My kids were conceived in the bed and my youngest son was born in it.  Most of my writing is done in bed.  What else will happen in this bed?  

As I continue to deconstruct the “us” post breakup, it is not my intention to erase Ex-man from my life completely.  I encourage him to have healthy connections with our kids (he has them half the week, they call him every night before bed when they’re at my house, and they have a photo of him in their bedroom).  I still have an “us” with our kids, he still has an “us” with our kids, we just don’t have an “us” together.  Is there anything else that I could be doing to make this breakup easier on our kids?