Final Night in Brooklyn

[an unfinished post discovered in my drafts folder]

Throughout this last weekend, I had flashes of our history on 30th street, random, compressed, floating up to me in no particular order, anchored by particular spots or viewpoints in the house: standing on the stairs, I could see Clio crawling in the upstairs hallway; in the dining room, a flash of my 30th birthday party, post-appendectomy, and the crash of the Christmas tree that had just been trimmed at our seventh--and last--tree trimming party. But Lying in our bed in our old room in Brooklyn, the rest of the house empty, I couldn't help but feel that the bed was a raft, floating in this house but also in two before it, in Park Slope and Washington Heights, and a buoy in the river of time that keeps rushing past.

This is the bed where Dave decided to go home for Thanksgiving the year his dad first battled cancer, and where I talked him out of getting there by motorcycle.

This is the bed where I sat and cried after delivering a terrible presentation (on the philosopher Deleuze, the film Hirsohima , Mon Amour, and the planning process for the Hiroshima memorial!) in Grad School.

This is where I first told Dave, in a whisper, risking everything, that I loved him.

I sat on the edge of this bed, taking off my heels, just before Dave proposed.

This is where I sat to call my parents and, tearfully, announce that I was pregnant with my first baby. And again, less tearfully, with my second.

This is where I labored with Eleri, where my water broke 20 minutes before she was born, just next door, in the bathtub.

In this bed, both of our girls occasionally slept as babies; knowing you're "not supposed to do that," this is where we lay, too tired to put them back in the cradle.

This is where countless conversations took place about leaving Brooklyn.

I wonder how many tears have soaked this mattress? If material has a memory?

In the morning, too early, we struggled from this bed for the last time, and someone came to take it away, to give to an old lady who would later send us a message to "bless our hearts."