This week, I’m lucky enough to have Andy, Milena and her boyfriend here for the holidays. I’m in my usual flurry of crazed activity, making last minute cookies and favorite dishes and putting final touches on beds so they look like the perfect beds you see in Pottery Barn catalogues. I’m clearly not taking my own advice about not fretting over how the place looks. Luckily, my sweet son called me out on it and we both collapsed in laughter over my obsessive compulsive bed making tendencies. Here’s his version of today’s events:
I’m scanning the environment as I settle into the guest room. It’s my first 48 hours in Pittsburgh with my mom for the holidays. So far the trip has been pretty ideal, Mom’s nursing a cold but still doing 5 things at once and probably 2-3 baked goods ahead of, or behind, the curve, depending on how she chooses to look at it.
My locus of attention turns to the bed. Ah, the bed, the great indicator of one’s character and disposition, the making of which, despite its relative ease, carries a weight that can’t be denied and yet creates a strange inertia that requires herculean effort to overcome at times. Over the past few months, especially when work opportunities were more limited, I took solace in making my bed first thing in the morning, after years of cycling between caring and absolutely, definitely not caring. It was one thing I had control over, a symbolic gesture to the universe that I was a serious person, working in the same room I sleep in, but with intent and focus. I’ll never be a cold shower guy but I can definitely be a ‘made bed’ kinda guy, I think.
Grabbing the duvet and auxilary sheets below, I quickly throw the bed back together. As someone with the potential to overthink this process, I’ve come to prioritize having a ‘made’ bed over a bed where all the sheets hidden by the soothing balm of the duvet are necessarily pulled into position or wrinkle free. I still stand by previously held sentiments, seeing only absurdity when faced with the sisyphean task of remaking an area that will surely be made unruly again. This feels like a reasonable compromise. Stepping back and examining my work, I feel like I’ve done the spiritual hajj that an adult child visiting a parent for the holidays should invest in, my debt is paid, I am free.
As mom starts to collect the sheets from the other guest bed, I happily involve myself, knowing full well that within moments, she’ll enter my room and notice the distinct lack of clothes on the floor, one made bed, a gentle reminder that I was a former GATE student. This would be my undoing.
Many well intentioned endeavors have been derailed by seemingly inconsequential, yet ultimately fatal, errors. The Mars Climate Orbiter and it’s failure to account for Metric to US Customary, the great leap forward’s four pests campaign, and perhaps in my case, my failure to account for the bright yellow under-blanket, peeking out under my duvet.
My mother’s reaction was swift and immediate, and with the ministration of a three letter agency, she peeked under the duvet to investigate the yellow blanket situation. And in a moment, just as suddenly as my bed was made, it was unmade, once again in an atomized state, a work in progress. I watched and listened as she explained her rationale and shared her process: the sheets were pulled down way too low, they need to reach the top of the bed with the extra bit folded over to conceal the embarrassing frayed edges, corners tucked in ‘hospital’ style, the lemony tongue of the yellow blanket artfully hidden under the duvet and pillows placed in a neat single column stack, as opposed to the staggered configuration I had employed.
Undaunted, neither accusatory nor frustrated, she dispensed with her wisdom in much the same way a skilled tradesmen might with an unseasoned apprentice. This was not a failure, my gesture was recognized, but in much the same way that an Italian will eat the pasta dinner a friend has prepared, while remaining painfully aware of the fact that they left the noodles in the pasta water 15 minutes longer than they should have. At this point I can’t stop laughing because this entire scenario feels so distinctly on brand, while my mom tucks corners, fighting back laughter while telling me “shut up, shut up, shut up!”.
At this point, the bed feels less like a piece of furniture and more like an ecosystem unto itself, with interlocking biomes and carefully balanced niches occupied by different species of fabric. A harmonious co-existence between warring factions of textile, all bound by the shared duty of ‘being a bed’. In her defense, it looked nice, a step above the happy compromise I had previously championed, and also abundantly clear that it was never really about checking a chore off a list. It was more a silent expression of love via each carefully tucked in sheet corner and folded edge, a reminder that someone cared enough to make the extra effort.
Knowing me, I’ll probably continue to game the system, figure out the fastest way to achieve a similar or indistinguishable degree of precision when it comes to bed-making, at least for the next week or so. But the art of the perfect bed isn’t lost on me. It feels appropriately sweet and Christmas-y and borne of the same genre of simple, everyday kindnesses that we only appreciate in their absence.
Mom is currently beating eggs for a dozen or so mini cheesecakes, so I’m going to optimistically assume she feels ahead of the holiday baking curve. But like the bed thing, I know it’s less about checking cookie obligations off a list and more a physical manifestation of concentrated effort and love, and…maybe a tiny bit of wanting to check things off a list.