Does anyone remember those beautiful lies they told us half a century ago now? Clotheslines are for the birds, they said. We’re heading into a paperless society, they said. You’ll never make a bed again, they said. Well, all I can say is hah, hah, and hah. Because, not even a decade into that tidy future, we began to restore clotheslines for the sake of the planet. We have taken the acid out of paper so it will last longer., and we keep accumulating it. And we pile on the pillows, I’m not sure why.
It was too easy, wasn’t it? Never mind how long takes to stuff a duvet into a duvet cover, at least that doesn’t happen every day. When you’re not stuffing you make your bed with a flick (or two) of the wrist—two flicks if it’s king-size—and presto! the bed is made.
But some creative, fancy-dan, lint-picking interior designer thought the bed looked too stark with only a puffy, pretty duvet on it, so they (it still jars me to use the plural) piled on extra pillows to fluff it up, dress the bed, as it were, to prop up a reader or a sick-a-bed with cloud-like comfort. I must admit it’s pretty luxurious to be ensconced in a cloud- fortress, just like the ones my brother and I used to build with sofa cushions. Far from the madding crowd is the expression that comes to mined, with the illustration: a nose and two eyes gazing out from behind a wall of down. And that reminds me of the trick question: “How do you get down off an elephant?” And the answer: “You don’t get down off an elephant, you get down off a duck.” Not these days, of course. You get goose down, polyester if you’re allergic.
So it is with pillows: foam, feathers, more often just stuff, whatever it is that stuffing-is-made-of-stuff: clumpy cotton, aromatic grasses (lavender is supposed to be a soporific. a mood-lifter, and a healer), whatever. Well, whatever it is, it’s 100% new material according to the label attached so firmly you have to rip open a seam to get it off, or leave it until the only new thing about the now-lumpy pillow is that tndestructible label.
I don’t ever remember such a plethora of pillows. Every store has them, not just the scented-candle-gift-stores, and of course, furniture stores, but every discount and dollar store has a stash of pillows to sell. They’re not all that expensive but if the designer has her way, you multiply the price by five or six, depending on the width of the bed and the co-ordinated colour scheme you and she are working out. I have six on my bed and I sleep alone.
Ay, there’s the rub. What do I do with those pillows when I go to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream, that is, not to read or sip camomile tea or indulge in lavender aroma-therapy? I like to lay my head on one old flat (goose down) pillow I’ve had for years and I simply don’t think about mites.We’ve both developed immunity by this time.
FLASH! Since I wrote t his, I I finally bought a new pair of goose down pillows, and a new mattress. I’ve decided I’m going to live a little longer.
So what do I do with the rest of the pillows?I hate to put them on the floor; you don’t know who’s been walking on it. If I pile them on a bedside chair, I don’t feel like making a fortress every night so I toss them carelessly and they tumble off. What I started doing was to pile them up on one side of the bed, leaving room for me to sleep on the other side, providing me with about the same space as afforded in a baby’s crib. Later, keeping in mind the other purpose for a backwash of pillows, I arranged the unused ones in a reader’s position, I mean, a neat accumulation of props ready for a midnight (more like 3 a.m.) ramble in my book or diary and, recently, my blog. This is good, in some ways. I mean, I get a lot done and I’m using my pillows. but I’m not getting enough sleep.
Sleep is for the birds.