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A few long weeks ago I was working hard to decorate an apartment for my mother. She was coming to visit the Nashville area and I wanted the place to feel like home, not like a rented room. I searched for treasures far and wide. I hunted through Craigslist the way that hunters have searched for wild game. But instead of Nubucks I was looking for comforters. Instead of White tail deer, I carried home trophies of matching curtains and pillows.
In the process I dropped a few dollars. Okay, maybe a few extra dollars. More than I had budgeted - which loosely interpreted means money I never had to begin with. But I was so determined this place be ready, that it be warm enough to say, Welcome Home - even if it wasn’t her home of forty odd years.
Friends donated furniture from their basements and guest rooms. They created artwork to hang on Mom’s walls, and spent one Saturday’s driving through the rain and collected items from all over the city. Finally, one item remained on my list - the bed. And not just any bed. Mom suffered a bad car wreck years ago and a good bed built for comfort was a must have. I returned to Craigslist, the holy grail of a bargain.
One ad read: Moving Sale: Everything Must go quickly. One of the items was a queen size bed. The ad said, please txt this number to respond. So I did exactly that. Or so I thought. This is the text conversation that followed.
"I am interested in your bed.”
The response came back, “Who is this?”
“Just a person reading Craigslist and responding to your ad.”
There was a pause. Then . . .
“I don’t have an ad on Craigslist. But I do have a bed for sale.”
After laughing at that bit of an odd response, I asked how much it cost, explaining that it is for my eighty year old mother who was in midst of transitioning. That I was over budget but that I needed to get her something nice. I received a text back that said the bed had belonged to a brother who had passed away. That she wanted someone special to have it. Then she wrote, this is Sharon by the way, and added quick photo just so I could put a face to a name.
We continued our text conversation which ultimately led to me getting the bed. She offered to take small payments if she needed just to help me out. It took another few weeks to arrange for my husband to pick up the bed in all his tired kindness. In the meantime, her daughter held the bed for me and didn’t sell it. No money down. Sight unseen.
We picked up the bed on a Saturday. I met her daughter Rachel, and her granddaughter, Stephanie, who loves reading and writing stories. I gave them a copy of Praying for Strangers. I had just missed meeting Sharon. She had flown out that week to visit her son in Taos, New Mexico where as it turned out I would be leading a women's writing retreat in 2014. We communicated back and forth about sage and green chilies, mesas and mountains.
“Soul sister,” I said in my last text to her, “bring a piece of that blue sky back to Nashville for me.
While all the stories of my shopping were not so poignant, so personal, every found treasure, from a silk plant to a sofa, brought with it a personal snapshot of someone’s life as they were promoted, downsized, divorced, trading up or getting out. They were all in the middle of this shifting change we call life. And for a few moments my story, my mother's story, and their story, became intertwined. I had a signifcant awareness of this fact as I was loading and unloading pieces from other peoples lives and blending them into my mother's new one.
So, back to that bed. The one listed on craigslist during the moving sale. I checked the number again. It had been one digit off. I had dialed the wrong number but made the right connection. Sharon’s bed had been in storage for years at her daughters. Apparently, just waiting for more than a few green dollars. It was waiting for the right person. It was waiting to build a bridge in a new relationship. And, it reminded me once again, that around the most unexpected corners in life - a short bus ride, a grocery line, a gas station, an airplane seat, that incredible connections could be made that could last a lifetime.
My mother’s great-granddaughters came to visit after her move, and exclaimed much delight over that bed. They jumped in the middle of it, snuggled in with storybooks and stuffed animals exclaiming that, “Everyone should have a bed like Nana’s!”
I must admit, dressed up with a comforter set from craigslist, with matching pillows and cushions and curtains from - yes - craigslist, the bed looks mighty, impressive. But it’s the story behind it, that’s worth it’s weight in gold.
