Last night my Rosemary told me, “I am so glad we have this bed with a firm mattress. I could not sleep in one that was soft.”

Having been married to Rosemary now for 49 years I do not have to go into the details on our life in various beds in all those years. I will delve into some not so intimate details.

For most of our married life we never had a headboard. In our house on Athlone in which we lived from 1986 until a year ago, not having a headboard was painful at times. Directly behind us were two leaded glass windows with a nice view of our side garden. Both of us had to prop up lots of pillows so we could read in bed.

When me moved to our present location in Kitsilano we decided to splurge on a a good bed. We went to Jordan’s Interiors and purchased a very beautiful and expensive Stickley queen-sized bed (with a headboard!). We also got a firm mattress. My former spine pains have gone away. We spend a lot of time in bed reading our newspapers, books and magazines.

As a very young boy (under five) I remember that our house in Buenos Aires did not have an extra room for me. Until I was four I slept in a crib in my parent’s bedroom. For about two years a small bed was placed in the living room.

I was commanded to sleep siestas so I had the luxury of sleeping on my parent’s bed. I remember seeing the movements of our Mercedes (she cooked and cleaned and lived with us) outside hanging the clothes. Those movements would lull me into a pleasant sleep.

I remember fondly lying in bed with my father (who may not have been sober) and singing with him Onward Christian Soldiers and My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.

After returning from a summer holiday stint in the camp (camp being the Anglo/Argentine term for the country) my father decorated a room next to the Mercedes’s room and I finally had my own room.

Our marriage bed in 1968 was a single bed in an apartment so narrow (it was 13 or 14 feet wide) that we were constantly on each other. This was not a bad thing at the time. I can assert here that a single bed for two had to be the sexiest thing on earth.

In 1973 Rosemary and I watched my mother breathe in and not breathe out when she died in bed. This is a moment that Rosemary and I have shared without any discussion for all these years.

Our Stickley bed is for three. Casi-Casi, our 17 pound male cat sleeps with us. He curls between us (thankfully we are not at an age where we could have children again) and by 7 in the morning he sits on my back or my stomach (depending on how I am sleeping) to announce to me that he would like to have his breakfast served.

Rosemary and I go downstairs and prepare our breakfast (after feeding Casi-Casi) and place it on a tray. We get our Vancouver Sun and NY Times at the front door and go up the stairs to the best time of the day, breakfast in bed.