36 x 75
published 29 Dec 2008, MST
Three Saturdays ago I got myself a Christmas gift -- a 36x75 Salem Purificar Theraposture mattress. I missed the 10-percent sale by two weeks, so I had to shell out the original amount of P6,300. Staggering, really, if you are a single parent, minding four growing children and working in the print media.
Still, my new mantra was to start looking after myself. I had been working hard, and investing on a good night's sleep was definitely sound. It would enable me to work even harder. (Work hard, sleep tight.)
In fact I was so eager to get my mattress home right away that I turned down the sales representative who was offering delivery arrangements because then I would have to wait for two more days.
No, I wanted to use my mattress that same night. I had waited 2 and a half years -- since that day in May 2006 when a chiropractor advised me I needed a special kind of bed for my mild-to-moderate levoscoliosis that was giving me chronic lower back pains. I'd waited enough. But since I did not have a big-enough vehicle, I rented a tricycle for 100 pesos (SM was a few minutes away from our house). I watched the driver expertly put the mattress on top of the roof of his vehicle and secure it with several meters of straw.
In my half of the room I shared with my daughters, I ripped open the plastic packaging and put the mattress over the bed frame. It fit snugly. Then I took out the pillowcase-fitted sheet-flat sheet set, beige and striped and this time still on sale, and put them where they belonged.
I surveyed the rest of the room. I dusted the small shelf -- sanctuary of my favorite books and current reading, the closet top and my working table. I swept the floor and then turned on the warm light lamp. The vertical bear dividers that defined my own space from my daughters’ rustled in the evening breeze. The bed looked inviting, and I was tired. But this time, I delayed indulgence. Not just yet, I thought.
I went downstairs to eat my dinner, leftovers from the hefty Italian lunch I shared with my dad and the children. The pasta was just as divine as it had been eight hours earlier. My aunt, who was helping me around the house, sliced watermelons.
Then I took a shower and changed into my favorite cotton "daster". I settled on the long couch and watched the foreign news (I take a breather from local events during my days off). The children were busy on their own. Bea, 14, was tapping madly at the computer keyboard, blogging; Josh, 13, was off to the studio, rehearsing with his band; Sophie,8, and Elmo,6, were playing, sprawled at the living room carpet -- she with her dolls, he with his robots. Life was just lovely.
Finally, I went upstairs and turned in.
Lying flat on my Christmas present, I felt all the pressure from my lower back being relieved, little by little. It may be the mattress -- the alternating layers of spring and special foam. It may be the novelty of it all -- I had spent the last eighteen months, after all, lying down on a folding bed, the dining room benches, a thin comforter over steel grills, and my sister's too-soft sofa bed.
But I suppose it was, above all, the feeling of finally obtaining what I had been waiting for, working hard for, wishing for. It was made sweeter by the knowledge that I had come a long way, and now, finally, I had something I deserved. And which deserved me back. It was another name for love.
I fell asleep chiding myself for being too cheesy over a "kutson."
And then it was morning. I felt so rested it was as if I had been sleeping for the last fifteen years.
