After my father died, I used to do a few chores for my mother when I went to visit her. One time I was doing some small task in her bedroom, perhaps changing a light bulb, and after I completed the task, I sat on the edge of her bed, which was neatly made as usual, and talked to her for a moment. I noticed that her mattress was lumpy, saggy, and very uneven. I suggested to her that she might want to consider getting a new mattress. I offered that it would help her sleep better and might help with small aches and pains.

She thought about it for a while and then said, “I don’t want my bet at home to be too comfortable. If it was, I might not want to travel any more.”

That response has remained with me ever since. I admit that I still don’t fully understand it. We have a very comfortable bed here in our home. It isn’t fancy, but we bought a new mattress some years ago and are very happy with it. It is good to be home in our own bed, but It isn’t that it is somehow inherently more comfortable than the beds in which we have slept for the past two weeks.

Our first night out, we stayed in a hotel in Vancouver. Then we flew to South Carolina where we stayed at our daughter’s place until we flew home yesterday. Both the hotel and our daughter’s guest bedroom feature king size beds. King size beds are enormous. I guess I’m just not a king. I’m used to sleeping on my side of the bed. We haven’t switched sides in over 51 years of marriage and we are unlikely to do so now. I always have plenty of room and plenty of covers, but I also am close enough to my wife to listen to her breathing and to reach out and touch her. When we sleep in a king size bed, however, we both seem to gauge our position from the outside edge of the bed. The result is that we sleep with more space between us. I don’t know how far apart we are in reality, but it certainly is farther than we are used to.

Coming home it feels good to sleep closer to one another.

I don’t think, however, it is enough of a deterrent to keep me from traveling, however. For one thing, we have a bed in our camper that is very close in size to the bed that we have in home. It, too, has a comfortable mattress. We sleep very well in that bed even though it is in a slide out that requires Susan to crawl over me to get in and out of bed if I am in it. That has not seemed to be a problem for me and she has not complained about it.

And we have enjoyed many different beds in many different places. In Japan, we slept on mattresses directly on mats on the floor and in hotel rooms that were essentially wall to wall bed with a small bathroom alcove and a television set that was nearly as big as the wall at the foot of the bed. We didn’t watch television in Japan, much and didn’t bother to turn on the sets in our hotel rooms. We liked to watch the weather forecasters on the televisions in restaurants and lobbies. You don’t have to speak Japanese to know what they are saying. Besides, weather forecasting is an art with limited accuracy, so it isn’t as if they are making absolute predictions that should form our plans.

Thinking about it today, I don’t think that a new mattress would have made any difference to my mom. I sort of wish we had purchased a new mattress for the bed she slept in when she lived in our home toward the end of her life. My excuse for not having a new mattress is that the bed is a hand-made antique and requires a custom mattress. Custom mattresses are pretty expensive and I justified not buying a new one because it was a guest room and guests generally don’t stay very many nights. My mother, however, made that room her own room when she moved to our house. I asked her several times about the bed and how she slept and she always said that she liked the bed and that it was very comfortable. I guess all of those years of having a less than perfect mattress in her home trained her for the time she lived with us.

My mother was a pretty good sleeper. At least she found it easy to go to sleep. Sometimes she would wake in the night and have difficulty going back to sleep, a trait which I definitely have inherited. She never complained about sleep, however, and that is a model for the way I want to be as I grow older.

Susan’s grandparents used to have extensive conversations about sleep most mornings when we visited them. They always claimed that they had not slept at all or had slept very little. She had a great aunt who often was at their home when we visited and she, too, seemed to have nights when she didn’t sleep a wink. I love them and I loved the opportunity to visit them and hear their conversations, but I don’t have any desire to be like them. I try to avoid complaining about sleep, or other things for that matter, when I talk to others. I don’t want to be dishonest, but I don’t want little things to be the topic of my conversation. I’d rather talk about gratitude and the things I am thankful to have in my life.

If I am an old coot, and that may well be the case, I don’t want to be a grumpy one. I don’t want to become a complainer. I’ve had too many good things in my life, including a wonderful trip to visit our daughter and grandson. I’m glad to be home, but I also am so glad we were able to make the trip. It was a joy and I hope I’ll be up for a lot more trips in the years to come.

We have two children. Yesterday, our daughter gave us a ride to the airport. We spent the day adventuring. In the evening, our son picked us up and gave us a ride home from the airport. That’s not a bad way to spend the day. We are fortunate people.