The Bunk Bed...

And the tiny women's movement that ensued.

I get why my kids wanted a bunk bed. It takes something they hate, SLEEP, and relocates it to a place they love, THE PLAYGROUND. So when my husband came across a cheap one on Prime Day and asked if we should get it, what right did I have to protest? Sure, there was some concern that my very large two-year-old was still sleeping in a crib and, in the throes of a punishing sleep regression, those bars and his inability to lift his own body weight over them were the only things separating a miserable situation from true hell. Because a bunk bed would mean consolidating our children from two rooms to one, moving our older son from a toddler bed to a grown up bed seven feet above the ground, and eliminating the cage around our younger son that made our nights remotely sleepable. But, I reassured myself, it doesn’t all have to happen RIGHT AWAY. Transitions are allowed to be incremental. No need to make our babies grow up faster than they need to.

Only, after my husband spent a good ten hours assembling this new bunk bed that arrived in like, 4000 separate pieces, he had no taste for incrementalism. His feeling was, it’s going to be a pain in the ass anyway, let’s just get it over with. I disagreed, but privately, in my head. I chose this approach for a number of reasons. One, I don’t really like to be disagreeable. Two, I have very little confidence in my ability to parent, and often defer to my husband’s point-of-view. Three, if things went well, we were all better off, but if they went poorly, at least I would know it was my husband’s fault.

Unfortunately, “being your husband’s fault” is cold comfort when you’ve been sitting in the dark for two and a half hours pleading with, then threatening your two-year-old to stop climbing out of his new bed, and to please not sing Baby Shark at full volume because his older brother is a real asshole when he doesn’t get enough sleep. It’s cold comfort, when three hours later, you’re awakened by the the heavy thud of said two-year-old hitting the floor and then screams and cries that awake the whole house. It’s cold comfort when that happens again the next night, and the next night, and this squirming, snoring child who somehow regularly produces far more pee than a night diaper can handle winds up slumbering perpendicular between you and your husband by 3am anyway. I’ve been exhausted. I’ve been angry. At my husband for fast-tracking the process and at myself for not articulating my concern, because once set into motion, it feels impossible to undo. My feelings have been conflicted, contemptuous, hurt.

With the extra two and a half hours per evening I’ve acquired to do nothing but stare into the darkness, try not to move, and ignore a tiny voice begging me for apple juice, I’ve been doing some reflecting. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I hold some unhelpful beliefs about men and women. Because whether it’s true or not, the lesson I’ve gleaned from living here on Earth over the last forty two years is this: men don’t want to be told they are wrong. It’s certainly what I took from so many years as a Late Night TV writer for exclusively male hosts. There, I thrived by never telling my bosses I disagreed with their notes. It was always more effective to write it the way they wanted so they could see they were wrong for themselves. In the best scenarios, the distance created between the notes and the rewrite would allow them to dissociate with their bad ideas, and come to think of my good ones as their own. And didn’t that get us where we all wanted in the end, toward the best final product? (To be clear, I’m not saying all male ideas are bad. But the bad ones are definitely bad.) I’ve internalized the same message from family, friends, and romantic relationships. I’ve willed myself to enjoy steak, drink fernet, listen to Wilco, rent The Bourne Identity, read four out of seven volumes in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series. And while I simply cannot watch Star Wars, I’ve willed myself to understand the references. Some of these experiences I felt richer for, but all of them I undertook because they seemed like the way into culture. My independent interests? Those have always felt like subculture.

I don’t know if men have made me do this. I’m more concerned about the fact that I feel pissed off all the time, because I am full of ideas and preferences that I discourage myself to voice, either because I question their validity, or because I assume men don’t want to hear them. How could I, a modern working woman who fancies herself a feminist, behave so stupidly? Why on earth would I cede all the richness of the world to men? How have I gotten by so long thinking we were equal without really thinking we are equal? Why is it so hard to answer questions like, what do I actually think? What do I actually like? What do I actually want for dinner? The bunk bed incident is not just a charming anecdote of my own self-sabotage, it’s step forward in my babies’ journeys toward becoming boys, then men. Soon, my home will be completely inundated with people whose right to think and feel I value more than my own. That’s going to really fucking suck unless I get my head out of my ass and start bossing some bros around fast. If I don’t, my life’s about to turn into a sausage party I’m hosting, without feeling entitled to enjoy.

One must be able to dream of better ways of being. One must be able to believe in the possibility of change. And so, I consider the bunk bed. What grew from the sinister design of cramming as many wretches as possible into a tiny space to make them work (military barracks, sailors cabins), isolate (prison), or both (internment/concentration camps), is now an indulgence children beg their parents for. It can really give a girl hope, ya know? Today you may be a vermin-infested, nocturnal pit stop for the truly downtrodden, but tomorrow? You could be an overpriced luxury item at Pottery Barn Kids.