By Patrick Robinson

I’m from a family of five boys. And my parents Jerry and Lee Robinson were products of the depression.  It taught them both about the value of family, although from different perspectives to be sure. My mother was a baby born to a sixteen year old girl who gave her up to a foster family. My father had many brothers and sisters and an alcoholic father of his own. So they brought the need to do better with their own offspring. 

Part of that was that we had rules of course. No one got a bike until they were at least 10 years old. Put your clothes in the box with your name on it. Always clean your plate among many.

And each one of us in turn would sleep as a child in the same bed.

The Angel Bed.

It wasn’t much to look at. A mesh of springs with a single mattress on top. A yellowed wood headboard and foot board. But it was there we would each wait as Mom would come in to tuck us in and give us a kiss goodnight then Dad would come in, and sit on the edge of the bed or in a chair and read us a  story from Bartlett’s Bedtime Stories. He would play all the parts and as happens we’d usually fall asleep before the end.

But that bed meant something. It meant tradition, and continuity, and family. It meant they thought of each of us as angels even though we were clearly not.

It was while in that bed I learned from them both, “Do your best, don't hold grudges, take care of others, don't go to bed angry.”

 From that ritual we learned the importance of respect, the calming power of the human voice, the need for touch and love at the close of day and getting enough rest matters a lot. 

Life lessons taught with love. 

I miss the Angel Bed and lessons we learned but I know they live on in me to this day.