IS YOUR BED MADE?

Phew, the bed is made. Do you know if yours is? Is it part of your morning routine? Whether I feel like it or not, I give in and make the bed.

Do you make the bed some days and not others? I do it every day. Are you apt to forget? If I leave the room without making the bed, I get to it when I return.

What is the deal? Do you care? How far do you take it? Do you fluff the pillows, add show pillows, use a bed ruffle?

The show pillows, which our niece Sage, now fifty-something, designed for us in high school, are still in the mix. The decorative throw pillows bring a smile whenever we look at the artistically positioned pink and blue flowers, which she painted on them.

Maybe my motivation to have a neatly made bed was inherited. Possibly I learned through osmosis. You see, before my mother's disability curtailed her ability to keep our home pristine, she would have made Martha Stewart appear to be a slob. With a look of satisfaction, my mother even tapped the beds after making them look ready to be filmed for a magazine.

No matter the low budget, whatever we had in my childhood home was kept clean and neat. My mother, a mother of four and a homemaker, known as a “housewife” back then, prided herself on keeping a company-ready living space.

My cousin Martin, my contemporary, was often one of our unexpected guests who would pop in with his parents and siblings. He was notorious for recklessly jumping on the neatly made bed. I knew better and could see the despair on my mother’s face when I shouted with glee, “Martin’s here.”

After I was married, on a day I recall vividly, I was not feeling too well but somehow mustered up the energy to go off to work. That was pre-children, pre-house, and when my husband left for work earlier than I did. The way that I felt, I had to skip making the bed that day.

Sure enough, that was the day that my supervisor ended up driving me home as I could not make it through the day. You guessed it. She came in to see the apartment and bingo; the bed was unmade.

She could care less, but I was highly embarrassed, even though I just wanted to crawl into the bed to convalesce. That incident bothered me so much that it may be what caused me to insist on making the beds every day.

I have met a few others over the years who were equally fanatic. One older friend whom I worked with told me that she taught her husband how to make the bed in his retirement. She cringed at the thought of the quilt covering over ruffled sheets and said that she told him to pull the bedding until it was stretched out flat before covering it over with a blanket or quilt.

Another time, I listened at a funeral when a woman gave a eulogy for her mother-in-law. Appreciatively, she acknowledged that she taught her to make her bed every morning.

Maybe because of those who came before me, or possibly it is just me that, I insisted that our children, to their dismay at times, only bring a friend to their bedroom if they had made their bed. I did not insist, as our next-door neighbor did, that the children dust and make their beds each morning before they went to school.

If I did not get the chance to make their bed for them, they were asked not to bring any friends up to their bedroom until they went up and made the bed. Now that they are adults, whether they make their beds remains up to them.

I believe they realize that it is more appealing to retire into a warm cozy bed in winter and a neatly appointed bed in summer. Even with no one visiting during the pandemic, it gives the spirit a lift.

With our three children settled in their own homes now, our grandchildren are considered our friends who can go upstairs and play on our neatly made beds whenever they wish. I may, however, request for my husband to help make the bed again when they finish playing. 

The true wonder is whether they will always make their beds. They will probably remember playing on the bed. What remains questionable is whether they will think the bed was neat or it was neater that they were allowed to play on it.

Throw pillows Sage designed and painted when she was in high school