Sheets

Funny how sometimes certain memories reawaken in a dega-vu sort of way, as if repeating themselves.

There was a time when I was very young, maybe six through ten or eleven years old, when I recognized the sweet comfort of bed sheets – especially those on my saggy porch cot at our lake cottage. I’d crawl between the sheets, and underneath the blue spread with its lighthouse/seagull design, and feel like I was in the safest, most secure place on earth.  The 100% cotton sheets were often crinkly-cool in the night humidity (this was before permanent press) but also so very welcoming.  I went to bed willingly in those days, full of expectancy for whatever the next morning would bring – namely sunshine and unencumbered, private hours at the lakefront.

Although circumstances are so much different now in just about every way, these past four weeks (since my strange bout with memory loss) have been sort of a “sheet appreciation month.”  I don’t think about it during the day, but at night when I crawl between the sheets and pull them up to my chin, I let out a grateful sigh of appreciation for the bed and the pillow that I pull over my head leaving a peep-hole for my nose.  I withdraw from activity and relax in the promised rest provided by clean, soft sheets that envelop me like a cloud.  Each morning I hate to leave the sheets.  But I do, and they wait, and each night I revisit them with the same gratitude.