My Duvet

My Duvet

As a child I was always busy during the holidays. Most of the time I played outside in the garden and in the forest behind it. When it rained, I played indoors and turned everything upside down. That usually resulted in dirty clothes and a head of hair through which my mother patiently had to comb to remove every knot and tangle without hurting me.

Yesterday I climbed into bed and sank a little into the thick mattress. The sheets had just been washed and smelled soft and cloudy.

Suddenly I remembered how, during the day when I was little, I always wanted to crawl into my bed. I wanted to push my nose into my duvet or pillow and rub it there to smell the scent of detergent and sleep.

I never did it, because I was such a little rascal who always had sand on her trousers, blades of grass between her toes, or threads of dust in her hair.

Bed was for after washing.
After being combed.
After anti-tangle spray.

No crumbs, grains of sand or bits of grass were allowed in bed.

The outside world stayed outside my duvet.

My bed could only be entered in perfect cleanliness.

And in the evening it was always wonderful to crawl under the covers.

After the outside world had been washed off me.

Often I hoped I would lie awake for a long time so that I could enjoy the soft freshness of the duvet.

Sleeping was bad. Nothing goes as fast as sleeping. It was a time machine to the next morning. To the moment when you were lifted from the heavenly sea of sheets and carried downstairs while your mother or father whispered in your ear that it had snowed, that today was only a half day of school, or that Obama had won the presidential election.

Then you were placed at the breakfast table in your pyjamas, and the only comfort was a bowl of Honey Pops with warm milk (because that was much better than cold).

My bed was a sea of sheets into which I stuck my head and held my breath to create the impression that I was swimming. With my feet I would kick and thrash to come back above the water — the sheet — and breathe again when I pulled it off my head.

It was a manger in which I imitated the baby Jesus, and the animals around me blew their breath over me so that I stayed warm. Jesus had become a girl.

It was — when my sister and I shared a room — a place where we invented dreams to tell each other.

A place — when I had a different room from my sister — where I shouted to her because our parents were not home and we had the chance to yell idiotic things back and forth. From one room to the other.

A place of safety because it seemed as if nobody could reach you. You were in your little den of down and no one else was allowed in. What a celebration.

You could do anything there under your duvet. It was a warm igloo that smelled of sleepy breath.

You could play Pokémon on the Gameboy
(warning! Turn off the sound so nobody hears you!).

You could sort your Diddl stationery.

You could count and compare your marbles
(warning again! A falling marble makes tragically loud noise in the silent night).

You could read with a flashlight — something you never did during the day, but which was fun to do there in your fluffy igloo.

You could hum a song to your teddy bears.

You could daydream with your eyes open.

And now?

Now the bed is a place where the day stops. Where you can do nothing anymore and are forced to give attention to the things that have been waiting in your head all day.

To make your to-do list.

To plan what you need to bring from the store tomorrow.

To wonder whether you shouldn’t go do something useful.

To realize that the to-do list is getting longer instead of shorter.

To promise yourself that the next day you will work longer and be extra productive.

To get annoyed with that internet modem that stands there like an idiot producing lights and sounds in the corner of the bedroom.

But those are the things in your head.

In the end you simply lie still, your head sticking out of the duvet.

In the end you do nothing there in your bed.

Your underwater world of duvet has dried up.

Your Diddl papers have been thrown away with the recycling.

Your book has been finished.

Your marbles lie somewhere far away in a pencil case in the basement.

Your igloo has melted.

~Hanna

---