The tale of the great just-right mattress exchange

It’s a Goldilocks tale. This bed is “too hard. This bed is “too soft.” What do you do? After three spine surgeries for a total of four fusions we had a problem. My husband was miserable whether he was sleeping upstairs in our bedroom alcove or downstairs in the man cave. Both beds had overstayed their welcome.

So the internet research began. A shocker — it was going to cost over a grand. For a mattress. My mother’s parents lost their entire farm in Minnesota during the Great Depression for lack of a thousand dollars. How could your basic queen equal that?

Terry tracked our order delivery date. Finally the good news — it was on the truck heading our way. I helped the girl unload an unlikely looking tall narrow rectangular box that afternoon. Massively heavy — unless you’re used to bench pressing every day.

The plan for The Great Mattress Exchange involved our son — who happens to be a bench presser — coming over. He would team up with John, friend and owner of where we live. When the old box springs were lifted off I was aghast at the dust on the carpeting beneath the beautiful bed frame John had built years before. You practically needed a depth finder to locate the bottom. I stood between the exposed slats and vacuumed under there for the first time, borrowing John’s canister machine as mine’s an upright. Truth is, I probably never would have entered that netherworld no matter what vacuum I had.

The “special tool” included in the box for opening the tightly wrapped rolled up mattress was a mere letter opener, which snapped before John got too far through the plastic. So he tried his knife. You see it coming. He sliced the mattress. The one that might have saved Grandpa Julius’ farm.

O-kay — time to “Keep Calm and Carry On.” A slogan, by the way, from the British government to its citizens ahead of the German blitz in World War II. A bombing raid wasn’t imminent, but I was in imminent danger of an all-out panic.

Fishing line and heavy duty needle to the rescue. John sewed up the underside gash like a pro. Now to wait six hours for the mattress to stretch itself out and settle in to its new digs. Medium firm memory foam. We had a hundred trial days to decide if it was our new best friend.

The next morning arrived. We didn’t need a hundred days. Don’t breathe a word to Goldilocks, but this one’s “just right.”