….and then we woke up in the Rough and Tumble’s bed.
It’s an age-old story, really. You’ve certainly heard versions of it before.
In one, the heroine is a miraculously pregnant virgin riding across the desert with her new husband on a road-weary ass. When the girl finally gets off at the Bethlehem exit, her road-weary ass meets an innkeeper who is also a road-weary ass. Somehow, after the innkeeper tells the girl there’s no room in his inn, she finds her way to a manger and gives birth, and we collectively wonder why her new husband didn’t make reservations before they left home.
In another version of the story, the female lead is a young girl who, while lost in the woods, smells porridge wafting out of a charming little cottage and decides a bowl of wet oats is worth trespassing for. Even without knowing her name, it’s easy for us to imagine this obliviously privileged girl as pale and blonde-haired. She’s convinced that her discriminating tastes for porridge, chairs, and beds aren’t picky or elitist, but rather reflections of her admirably high standards. It’s clear to the rest of us that she deserves to be eaten by bears.
In our version of the story, my partner and I found ourselves in need of a place to stay after a series of unfortunate events left our home simultaneously without both a floor AND running water. (I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that after eating too much tan, gravy-covered food on Thanksgiving, one of us literally fell through our living room floor. And, to complicate matters further, our sewer line decided to collapse a few days later. Turns out, sewer lines have little regard for timing.)
And then we woke up in the Rough and Tumble’s bed.
Yep… when they heard of our plight, our good friends tied down all their moveable possessions, moved their camper to our backyard, taught us how to empty something called “grey water” (and, more importantly, how to NOT accidentally empty the “black water” that fills the camper’s septic system), and left us with a lovely place to lay our heads.
For the next two weeks we lived in Campy – the Rough and Tumble’s happily yellow-trimmed cocoon of goodness. Sure, Campy rocked a little when we walked. And, when tornado sirens sounded a couple of days before Christmas, we wondered if Campy might become our chariot to Oz. But, for a few fun-filled weeks, Campy was home. He didn’t complain about muddy footprints or flinch at our German shepherd’s impolite sniffing at his corners. The poetry taped next to his bed whispered us goodnight. The stained glass hanging in his windows wished us good morning. I think I even heard his big battery-heart humming while we opened our Christmas presents.
(In the spirit of full disclosure, his very tiny shower also mumbled a few off-color things one evening, but we agreed that what happens in the bathroom stays in the bathroom.)
I guess what I’m trying to say is that everybody needs a teeny- tiny traveling folk band in their corner. Trust me. They’re better than at least one minor biblical character AND an entire family of inhospitable bears. Plus, their bed is juuuuuuuuuust right.