Today was was perhaps, the most perfect morning of the year. The temperature was in the 60's, the humidity was low, so Maggie and I spent it outdoors, Mags snoozing on the patio table with the umbrella lofted high to shade her from the rising sun. Marti visited for awhile, and later I made lunch for us to eat outside, celery and carrot sticks, alongside a cold meatloaf sandwich, smeared with ketchup on whole wheat for me, a ramekin of diced poached chicken with slivers of celery for her. I drank my iced tea, she lapped her iced water and life was about as good as it gets.
While she snoozed in her little lambswool bed, I sat in an Adirondack chair with a book, until my full tummy and the warm sun made me too drowsy to read. Back in the house, I slipped into bed for a nap, smiling as I pulled up my newly gifted sheets from Lindsay, silky soft, pale blue sheets, one-thousand thread count, egyptian cotton sheets to be exact, and as I lay there I remembered another set of blue sheets, as I once again, my thoughts went back to my childhood.
Mother's sheets were always white when I was a young girl, never fitted, and her pillowcases homemade from flour sacks or remants of fabric. It was my job to iron the pillowcases, even when I was so young that I had to pull up a box or a stool to stand on to reach the iron, as ironing boards weren't adjustable as they are now. I was so proud of those cases, I ironed them perfectly, and folded them length ways, then again, then once again and we tucked them into her top, sachet lined, dresser drawer alongside her white sheets.
Our little house in the country was nestled in a valley, surrounded by corn and bean fields, the yard filled with fruit and shade trees, with my beloved creek running alongside our property. On washday, Mother had a huge black iron pot, and she would make a fire in the yard, put the pot over the fire on a stand, then dip bucket after bucket into the well to fill the pot with water, and while she waited for it to heat, we would pull her wringer-washer out of the smokehouse, then fill her tubs, and she would wash our laundry with lye soap she had made, then we would hang them on the line to dry. I know this all sounds like something from Little House on the Prairie, but that's the way we lived. I took my baths in a galvanized bathtub in the kitchen, filled with water she had heated on the stove. It was a really simple life.
But on to the blue sheets.... Mother had a friend, Helen, that lived in "town." Hooterville's mother, Mary Beth, was also a friend of Helen's, and that's how I met the Hoot... Anyway, lots of Saturdays, we would go to Helen's, spend the night and Mother would wash our clothes in Helen's basement, because she had an automatic washing machine. And not only did she have a washing machine, but she had something even better to a young girl, a claw-footed bathtub. Oh, my, that bathtub was really something. I would take a long, steaming bath, and she had a dresser in her bathroom and the top of it was filled with creams and lotions and potions and body powder. It was good stuff, too, I remember Shalimar and My Sin, and I would dust myself with that body powder after my prune shriveled little body emerged from the tub, and put on either my flannel jammies or my baby doll's, depending on the season, and then I would go into her guest room, with it's Jenny Lind bed, and yep, you guessed it, pale blue sheets. She had a set of yellow ones, too, but I was always partial to the blue ones. The town life was so glamorous to a little country girl, there were sidewalks, parks to visit, the downtown movie theater, and television to watch. We always watched Lawrence Welk on Saturday night and Mary Beth would dance with Helen's husband, Fred in the living room.
So when Lindsay unexpectedly gave me these sheets, it surely did bring back fond memories. And while Lindsay's sheets are really special, they don't quite measure up to the sheets of my childhood. I'm sure she understands this, childhood memories are always the most intense.
So thanks for the gift, sweet Dilly, I will think of Helen's blue sheets often when I slip under your buttery soft ones to sleep...
