Bedsheet

Some really specific object nostalgia

Have you seen this bedsheet????

I have seen this bedsheet somewhere before. This exact print; those same colours.

It had an impact on me, and I can’t remember for what exact reason. When I see it again, now used as a dust protector over the top of a car in my homestay’s garage, it hits me like the edge of a memory - not the story itself, but an object in the background. Like a specific smell or taste or sound. The mis-en-scene of something bigger that I can’t quite recall.

The sight of the sheet doesn’t quite make me gasp. It doesn’t make me cry, either. But I feel both in my throat - or the memory of them, perhaps - as I am shown to my room, weighed down with my bags. It’s a good kind of crying. It’s a good gasp. When I see the sheet, I am reminded of a gentle kind of awe at something that happened, somewhere before.

Did it dress one of the many beds I’ve slept on? Did I sleep under or over it? Maybe I just sat on it as I talked to someone about something important, eyeing its gaudy green stripes and vibrant florals as I tried to find the right words. I know the pattern so well; I have definitely studied this sheet before, I think to myself. I quite like the design, actually. This will sound stupid, but to my brain, it looks how sheets in hot countries should look. It’s the quintessential holiday-home sheet.

I have an inkling that I may have shared it, too. Always the last one to get up, I would make the bed in the mornings. I can almost feel it in my fingers, being folded up and tossed down on the mattress, before I go to boil water for my coffee. In fact, that simple routine matches with the quiet but poignant contentedness that blossoms when I see the bedding laid out on the car.

Maybe I just saw the sheet on a washing line, once. That’s very possible. On a clear, sunny day. Nothing but blue and crickets and sea sounds. I can see it dancing softly on a whisper of a breeze, a morsel of respite from the hot sun. Just one of many things I admired on a particularly beautiful day.

Of course, my mind could just be playing tricks, too. I might have déja vu for a bedsheet that never held me; that I never held; that I never saw before. But of course, I hope we did share a moment of “am-I-in-heaven” together, however it may have transpired. I wish I could put my finger on it, but maybe not really knowing is part of the magic.