I have slept in quite a number of different kinds of “beds” in my life.

My first bed was a beautiful free-standing oval cradle that my parents had put together so they could travel with it. It was lined with soft light blue fabric. I never asked why it was light blue, but I suspected that my father had wanted me to be a boy.

During a train trip, I slept on a seat wrapped in a light blue blanket, as my parents did not bring my cradle. Mother was very annoyed about that.

I vaguely remember the time when I outgrew the small crib, and my parents put me in a toddler bed surrounded with walls like the ones my baby corral had. My mother told me that I cried and cried. They tried all kinds of music, silence, and other methods, but nothing calmed me until my father took a light blue sheet and put it around the bars. As soon as I saw my familiar light blue surrounding, I slept like a baby, which I still was.

When we moved from a house to an apartment, to make space for me to play in my small room, my parents bought a horizontal cabinet folding wall bed. My nanny would make the bed and then just fold it, so I had a lot of space for my circus. Since I went to a circus at three years old, my favorite thing was to play circus. I placed a cord as high as I could in a corner (standing on a chair and hammering a small nail in the wall) and tied it tight to a chair on the floor. Then I slide my dolls, hanging from a clothes pin, from the top to bottom of the cord. They were my trapeze dolls, one black baby boy, a blue soft rabbit, and a white Antarctic bear.

We often visited my grandparents at their farm and my bed there was amazing. It was pure wool and smelled fresh because my grandmother made a point to dry the linen hanging outside and getting all the sun from early in the morning.

When I was nine years old my parents took me to Argentina. We traveled with my father’s Aunt, Celmira. At the hotel in the middle of Buenos Aires downtown we had two rooms, one for my parents, and another for my great aunt and me. My queen bed was really hard, and I really liked it, but my great aunt said she liked a softer bed, so they changed her mattress. I was amazed at how nice the hotel staff was when they carried the other mattress and made the bed.

After that trip I stayed in many other hotels in Chile and my experience with beds was always an adventure. Soft, hard, never enough blankets.

When I first came to study in the United States, I experienced my first student dorm bed. It was not very comfortable, but it also served me as a desk to study and sofa to watch TV or listen to my record player that occupied the desk.

Once, during a visit to an island in the states, I had to share the bed with another girl and, having been an only child, I was extremely uncomfortable. That was when I learned to sleep without moving, which I still do.

When I returned to Chile with my Masters Degree, I moved to the South to a city where the climate is very humid. Every night I had to undo the bed and hold not only the sheets but also the three blankets on top of a kerosene heater. Lots of moisture came out of every one of them. Once the moisture was not showing in the air anymore, I made the bed again and slept very nicely wrapped under the heavy weight of the double wool blankets–another reason not to move while sleeping on my back. Nights were very cold there.

Another memorable time was when I was attending a conference in Brussels, where hotels were tiny, expensive, and had only one bathroom per floor. That bed had a round hole right under my waist. I had to ask for extra towels and tried to cover the hole. It was a week with back pain.

In general, the single beds on the cruise ships are very well researched by the cruise line hotel managers. The mattresses are not soft, not hard, the linen is real high quality cotton and the blankets warm and light. Once, my friend Karelin and I took a small cruise to Bahamas on a ship that has been remodeled by an unknown cruise line that later went through a class-action for telemarketing practices. The beds in our cabin were of metal soldered to the floor, very low and hard. In the middle of a rough sea night, without any previous announcement, a crewman opened our door, jumped on one of our beds and opened the porthole saying ” the storm is coming!”. He promptly got down and slammed the door. We didn’t slept that night at all because of the cold wind, and even waves, coming into our cabin.

One of the worse experiences with beds was in Guatemala during a training for translators in the countryside. Our group was lodged at a church that was under construction. The rooms we stayed in had no roofs. A lady gave me a “mattress” made of straw wrapped in burlap and a blanket. As soon as I crawled into the bed made out of wood, I realized that the “mattress” had all kinds of insects and, since there was no roof, insects also came to visit attracted by my candle. I managed to curl up in the blanket, extinguish the candle, and prayed all night long without being able to sleep at all. Next five nights the insect nightmare continued, and I slept hardly one or two hours. At least my little open room was near the only toilet available for the entire group.

Sometimes there was no bed, but hammocks. I had one that I bought in Yucatan in my studio while I was a student at the University of Texas in Austin. I used the bed as a desk and I slept in the hammock. It was quite comfortable. I later learned how to properly sleep in a hammock while staying at the house of a Bible translator in Merida.

I also had a horrible experience while sleeping on a hammock at a church in Playa del Carmen when this now popular beach was only a fishing little spot. While visiting the translation project in Merida in the Yucatan peninsula, the pastor told me they had been invited to a ceremony at a church in Playa del Carmen. He wanted our small group to go with him. We drove on a Saturday to Playa del Carmen. We were invited to stay for the night in a room in the church. Not only us but also girls from the chorus that was going to sing on Sunday’s service were also sleeping that night there. Of course hammocks were hung and each of us was assigned one. As soon as I changed clothes and got up on the “bed” I saw, on one of the borders of the hammock, an incredibly big insect with a curled tail advancing toward my arm. I promptly asked the girl on the next hammock what insect was that. After she took a look she shouted: “Jump!” I jumped on the opposite side from where the insect was and the girl in the next hammock started shouting “Scorpions, scorpions, check your hammocks”. Fortunately, they only found 2 or 3 more scorpions on the floor near a corner of the room, but not any others on the hammocks. Next morning one of the girls in my group asked the chorus director if she could sing with them and I heard the most beautiful “How Great Thy Art” hymn in Spanish.

Another rather comic experience with beds was in Chile at a “Hostal” in Concepcion. This was a trip with my best friend. I wanted her to see the beauty of the South of Chile. This kind of bed and breakfast was owned by a lady that mainly catered to University students coming to the big city of Concepcion from little villages around the area, but also rented rooms to tourists. Our bedroom turned to be located on the third floor. It had one single and one double bed. A student helped us to take our bags up. We were tired after the flight from Santiago to Concepcion so we decided to go early to bed. I took the single bed and Karelin the double. Soon after we have turned the light off I heard a loud bang coming from my friend’s bed. I turned on the light and saw Karelin on the floor, sitting on the mattress that had fallen off the bed frame, edge and all. She was laughing trying no to make noise and I started laughing also, thinking after that big bang we were not going to wake up anybody with our laugh. We managed to put back the border on the frame of the bed but the episode continued everytime that, in her sleep, Karelin turned. We did not sleep too much. Next morning we went to visit with my cousin and the story about the bed make everybody smile. Before we left the Hostal be learned that the owner was a believer in Christ and we prayed together for her to enlarge her territory like Jabez.

As a big contrast, I once stayed at a Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Beijing, China, where I slept in the most comfortable bed of my life.

My current twin bed is adjustable, and I can raise my feet or my head to whatever height I need.

All these experiences bring a Scripture to mind:

¹¹ Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: ¹² I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. ¹³ I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:11-13 (“Bible Gateway Passage: Philippians 4:11-13 – New King James Version” 2015)