John and I will be in the schoolhouse a little longer, but the summer has begun to transition to memories. Guests have moved in and out of the guest bed. At first, Angie who slept downstairs with Jessica but couldn’t keep her eyes from the bed upstairs, not having Jessica’s pension for dark places. Erin removed everything extraneous from the bed. “I am a one pillow girl,” but arranged pillows and a blanket on the floor for meditation. Sara Ann stayed in the schoolhouse alone and in the cavern of the empty rooms, she stripped the bed of all but the sheet and wrapped herself in her own familiar sleeping bag. Alaina made the bed everyday precisely as she found it, but hung her dresses around the room wearing something new everyday. Yvonne was here only one night, but she did not sleep till morning, having a headache that would not give way in the dark. She slept with intense dreams that we discussed later over coffee. Jim made the bed his home for four days, sleeping through the affects of vertigo. Sleep was his only refuge until the world stopped spinning. Lynnette checked on him regularly and joined him at night.... always worried until he was able to stand and we all went to Crystal Lake. Little Ben was the last to sleep in our guest bed. He made the room his own, stacking his clothes, pulling over a little school desk for “work,” arranging all the toys from the house around the bed. His favorite stuffed dog that came in his back pack settled onto the pillows. The first night during a thunder storm, his dad found him sitting upright and crawled in beside him to alleviate the noise and light. To my delight, each morning when he crawled out of the guest bed, he came to me for a hug. All of these stories have become part of the schoolhouse.
