EATING IN THE BEDROOM (Nursing Home Life, part 10)

There were a few absolutes when it came to my mother. There was, for example, ‘don’t bite the bottom off of an ice cream cone.” It was a warning, not a response. So I tried it once at a community picnic on the steps of Cambridge school. The results were—unpleasant! Sticky ice cream dribbled down my legs and settled on the steps. Neighbours began to shout for help. Mother appeared. “I told you not to do that,” she scolded. I believe this was my first true public humiliation. A second absolute proved to be just as wise, and not quite so publicly embarrassing. “Never go to bed with gum in your mouth,” she warned. I didn’t get breakfast the morning after I tried that. Mother used the time to cut the gum out of my hair. I still had time to catch the school bus. When people said, “You got a haircut,” I simply nodded. I tested both these absolutes in early childhood. It took me longer to test another. “Never eat in bed,’ said my mother. It would have been difficult for me to eat in my bed even if I’d wanted to. Somehow I would have had to get food without her knowing, sneak it past her and carry it all the way upstairs. I believe this absolute remained untested until the winter of 1973, when I paid a spring-break visit to my boyfriend David who was studying at Acadia University in Wolfville NS. On that brief vacation, the act of eating in bed seemed insignificant compared with other rules that were falling by the wayside. For example: “No girls allowed in the boys’ residence” and “Never sleep with a man until after your wedding.” In the heady confusion of all this disobedience, can you blame me for forgetting my mother’s long-ago given advice about eating in bed? At that time downtown Wolfville was served by an IGA grocery store. It was impossible to enter that store without succumbing to the fragrant seduction of the cinnamon sugar doughnuts rolling hot and fresh off the conveyer belt. Can you blame us for failing to consider what the consequences might be if we ate them in David’s bed? When advising my children, I was more specific than my mother had been. I said: “Never bite the bottom off an ice cream cone because the ice cream will pour out and you will be made to clean up the ness.” To my children I said: “Never go to bed with gum in your mouth because if you do, it will tangle in your hair and I will have to give you a haircut.” To my children I said: “Never take cinnamon sugar doughnuts to bed. The sugar granules are most uncomfortable to lie on.” By that time, the practice of sharing a bed before marriage was so widely accepted that it hardly bore mentioning, and I hesitated to launch a detailed conversation about the experience of rolling around on a bed of sugar granules. All of this came back to my mind when I read the message my iPhone delivered from my good friend Rob on the second day of December in 2018. “David and Wendy: Thank you for a really nice evening together. I think we should always have bedroom meals. Much more comfortable than formal dining rooms.” Oh, what would my mother have said? Perhaps I ought to say a word or two about the evening that prompted the note, though it seems a shame to muddy the truth of a story by presenting the facts. Rob Jennifer and I had spent the evening sitting around a card table at the foot of David’s bed, drinking two kinds of wine while eating brie and tortiere with mango chutney. David had already dined on a plate of pureed something-or-other from the Laurier House dining room and a glass of thickened water. We weren’t quite as insensitive as it seems. Even when David was able to sit at formal tables with the rest of us, he never cared for any meat wrapped in pastry, and he has declined all offers of thickened wine since the first time he tried a little of it on a teaspoon. In addition to the other provisions, Rob and Jennifer had also brought a carton of his favourite Christmas ice cream. All four of us enjoyed a bowl of that and delighted in an evening of love and laughter. Neither sugar granules nor any other traces of food were left in David’s bed. It is possible that a future archaeologist, unearthing an iPhone might misunderstand the simple message from rob. So I wanted to clear up any remaining ambiguity here. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.