I pull my comforter off the bed and drag it over to my chair. There’s a pink knit throw tossed over the chair to keep my bare legs from being attacked by the itchy fibers that adorn its bright green upholstery. Really, it’s a garish chair. I sort of hate it; it’s too low for my desk, causing me to hunch over when I work or do my makeup, and the last thing I need is another item to add to the list of things I’d prefer were different about myself. Least of all a hump at the nape of my neck.
This week, I have a cold. I can’t get warm. Neither can my room, it seems. I’m in sweats, I’m wearing socks. The thermostat is set to seventy degrees—my idea—which is rare. I am my father’s daughter, after all; sixty-eight is as high as you ever need to go. I’m in my chair. My comforter is bunched up all around me, creating a mass that isn’t really there when it’s lying flat on my bed. The folds are soft and cushioned, no cold air comes through. How can I be expected to leave at a time like this?
I tend to make my bed every morning; even when I sleep at Tom’s, I’ve gotten into the habit of sometimes making his bed while he fixes coffee and breakfast in the kitchen. During our trip to New York, I made our bed at the Airbnb each day. When I sleep, I don’t have a habit of twisting the covers all around, no matter how often I turn from side to side. I’ve found that my comforter mostly stays put, that the corners rarely pull away from their posts at the foot of the bed.
This makes my job easy. Often, I make the bed with me still in it, pulling the covers up around my waist and smoothing them over each edge of the bed. I slide out of the crease I made so seamlessly like a gymnast dismounting her beam. No adjustments; I stick the landing. Crowd goes wild. Except, I don’t get a medal. There is no one present to give me praise, except for me. The incentive is inverted in that my motivation is cyclical; do this thing so that you may do the opposite. That’s the goal, right?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we do the things we do, whether or not there is a prize tacked on at the end. I’ve been asking myself questions like, what am I gaining from this? Where is the benefit in all of this? In tending to my chores, what is the broader meaning of my actions outside of doing the thing I always do because that’s how I was raised to do it? Does it make me feel good? If yes, does it make me feel good because it makes me feel normal? Am I opposed to that dynamic? Not necessarily.
In making my bed, I am doing two things in the process: First, in the most basic sense, I’m tidying up. I’m cleaning. I’m making my room look nice. I’m doing the right thing. Making your bed in the morning is on par with brushing your teeth first thing; it makes your whole day—if not better—different. The first thing I do when I get home is take my things to my room, and it’s nice to be welcomed by the calm of a well-tailored bed. I always leave a wrinkle here and there, to add a touch of charm.
Second, I’m creating pleasure. The pleasure of peeling back the covers and crawling into bed after a long day is one of those oddly satisfying, wholly universal cliches of living your life as a standard, privileged individual who has the very normal luxury of working the kind of job that affords you a place to come home to (at a decent hour, no less) and a bed to crawl into. And while I’d like a new duvet, that expense isn’t quite in the budget this month.
I make my bed, his bed, the bed, a bed, because it’s the thing to do. As a creature of habit, I find this a difficult cycle to break. I like the motions, I like that it makes me move my body before I’m really ready to. I like that it gets me moving. I like that a freshly-made bed acts as a shield, a force field of my own making keeping me from crawling back in and setting another eight-minute timer. An unmade bed, to me, should only be left that way if you’re in a rush. And I hate rushing.
Still, I know I should give myself more grace. This has been an idea I’ve been trying to work into my daily practice for years, and I am only just recently getting the hang of it. So, in the spirit of being graceful, when I left the house this morning, I deliberately left my bed unmade—and I did not rush. This morning, I was sick. I was tired. I was entirely too cold. And in not wanting to leave, I decided to do myself a favor for when I would get home later and want nothing more than to peel off my outside clothes, put on my pajamas, and crawl into bed for an hour or so to recover.
Like I said before, something about a well-made bed acts as an incentive to stay out of it for as long as possible. This is delayed gratification—you know just how good it will feel when you can no longer wait and it’s time to ease in. My incentive today was the opposite; I knew just how good it would feel to slip into bed straight away. I’m beginning to understand that the incentive is not always a constant; behaviors don’t always have to be the same, and when they differ, it doesn’t have to mean chaos.
So, here I sit. It’s been at least twelve hours since I first started writing this. My knit throw is draped over my shoulders, I’m on the couch with Hannah. We’re watching Sex and the City, my throat and sinuses are having a duel to see who’s got it badder. I’m not one to get sick, but I am one to pout. And while I haven’t crawled into bed quite yet, I can’t deny how satisfied I already feel that I can just sink in without peeling the covers back.
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A playlist I made a few summers ago, for laying in bed
Very nice <3 bed collections <3