A Fitting Memory

Folding fitted sheets is a mundane task: put one rounded corner inverted into the other. As I recently folded our non-iron queen size sheets, I had a flashback. In 1966 Paul and I were newlywed parents and graduate students at the University of Illinois. Non-iron, as well as, fitted sheets were quite an innovation, and I was quite grateful that I wasn't spending time at the ironing board, like my mother had. But I struggled to make a neatly folded sheet for the linen closet.

We did our laundry at a laundromat, where we tried to study, as soap suds added a fascinating slosh of bubbles to swirling clothing, towels and sheets. Why I was mesmerized by the TV-esque window of the washing machine, I leave to a psychologist. 

But back to the flashback recall.  One day I stayed home with our baby, while Paul went to the laudromat.
I doubt that a woman at the laundromat would have been as helpful to me, but there was my handsome husband, fumbling with fitted corners, and she jumped right in. He had a learning moment, and then a 

teaching moment with me when he came home.

Paul carried the freshly laundered bedding to our bedroom and taught me what to do with these new-fangled sheets (can I even remember how to fold hospital corners for flat sheets now)?  Fifty-seven years later, just one type of bottom sheets are now in our linen closet. And I don't have to iron them.