I like my high thread count sheets, and I am not going to apologize for them. I began buying nice sheets about eight years ago, sheets that used to be well out of my price range, sheets that come in either white or ivory and had packaging with calligraphy on it. They feel better, softer and more sensual, and even if I don’t get eight hours of sleep, I would like to have the environment be ripe for a good six hours. High thread counts are almost the standard now, though, and those sheets of the lifestyles of the rich and famous are pretty much available on trailer budgets and in a rainbow of colors. So I branched out from the typical boring ivory, and now I have a small collection of European style and Egyptian cotton bedding sets, in hues like taupe and sage green and rich chocolate brown.
My children appreciate the finer bed linens as well, and when they have difficulty falling asleep in their own beds, they like to climb into mine. Something about that combination of the king sized bed, the familiar smells of their parents, and the luxury sheets lull them to sleep faster than a Benadryl. When I am ready to go to bed, my husband will move whichever child nodded off in our bed, carefully walking them back to their own rooms, so that I can get comfy and read before I too slumber. It’s not uncommon for one of my daughters to find her way back to my bed after I have gone to sleep. At least one night a week, I will wake up to pee, only to find one of my kids drooling away on my husband’s pillow. If they are feeling stressed, or if they have a babysitter, or they have any other change in their normal routines, they soothe themselves by resting in my room. In other words, my bed is not an adults-only domain. And sometimes, it really should be.
Recently, my husband and I went to a party, and my friend SF babysat the girls. SF knows our musical bed routine well, as most of the time when she comes over to watch my children, one of them will end up in my room before the night is over. We all accept that as the norm and don’t really do much to change it, because both girls are easy to move back to their own beds. When we get home, SF gives me a full report of how they behaved and ate and slept, including the usual difficulties in falling asleep.
On this particular night, my youngest daughter, S, had that feeling that sleep was going to be difficult to attain, so she thought it would be best to start out in my bed instead of her own. SF knows I am cool with it and got both the girls to go through the bedtime routine of showering and tooth brushing and picture book reading. When it was finally time to say good night, S removed the shams and decorative pillows and turned down the comforter and top sheet. She looked at the bed before she climbed in.
“What is all over these sheets?” she asked SF.
SF looked at the brown sheets, which had evidence of conjugal relations on them. Some hot freaky conjugal relations. Which meant that evidence was kind of all over the place. SF is a friend, and a woman, and familiar with what she saw. Wisely, she didn’t say a word, nor did she laugh.
E, my older daughter, also inspected the sheets. “It’s probably just drool stains. I have them all over my bed too.”
S most likely gave E a skeptical look, so E did what for some reason seemed logical to her. She got on the bed and sniffed the stains. According to SF, she didn’t just gingerly snuffle. She got her nose right up on the stains and inhaled deeply.
“I think it’s just drool, they’re fine,” E declared. SF stifled all remarks or outburst of laughter, and instead tucked my daughter into my filthy nasty semen covered sheets and wished her a good night.
When we got home from our evening out, SF asked to speak to me alone, while my husband was downstairs piddling about with his wallet and loose change and keys and whatever the hell else he digs out of his pockets, which could be rocks and frogs and baseball cards for all I know.
“I have to tell you what happened tonight,” SF said, “but I don’t want your husband to hear.” And she relayed that story to me as delicately as she knew how.
“For the record,” I said, “I just changed the sheets two days ago. They aren’t that dirty.”
Because, really, what else could I say.
My mother used to complain incessantly about how nothing was ever just hers. I thought she was selfish at the time, and in all honesty, she is selfish, but in some ways, I know what she means. I am not going to change my sheets every time I get my freak on to protect my children from a reality they will learn on their own in less than ten years, which disturbs me every time I think it. One day, E will have her own sex stained sheets, and she might sniff it, and that smell might trigger a memory back to one night when she was eleven and her sister could not identify what was all over their parents’ bed, and she will know. Five gray hairs just sprouted on my head typing that sentence.
And that’s why kids should sleep in their own beds. And sheets should only be ivory.
No comments:
Post a Comment