I have mentioned before that my mama keeps a beautiful home. In fact, her idea of heaven on earth would be to have four or five days of blissful alone time so that she could dust every single picture frame, clean vast expanses of baseboards and wash each window with her homemade glass-cleaning solution (wiping only with newspaper, girls. only with newspaper. paper towels leave pesky streaks). And then, for kicks, she would launder all her table linens, hang them up to dry, and press them to perfection with a red-hot Oreck iron.
You see, housekeeping, for Mama, isn’t so much a chore as a calling, and she does it better than anyone else I know.
If there’s any crack at all in my mama’s firm housekeeping foundation, it’s that she favors form over function. It’s not a big deal, really – it’s simply a result of her desire for everything to look pretty. She doesn’t like unsightly objects to disturb her decorative flow, and that is why she once placed a large hall tree in front of the air conditioner thermostat in my childhood home.
Now granted, the hall tree looked lovely, but there was absolutely no way to make a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom without slamming a substantial portion of my thigh against it. Once I limped back to my bedroom and gingerly crawled into bed, however, at least I could sleep with the assurance that Mama’s aesthetic sensibilities were preserved by keeping that unsightly thermostat out of sight. And besides, that deep purple thigh-welt was bound to fade with time.
When Mama and Daddy moved to another house about a year and a half ago, my sister and I made it our mission to give Mama more function, even if that meant sacrificing a bit of her beloved decorative form. I spent several weeks in my hometown before the big move, cleaning out closets, setting up for the mother of all garage sales, and trying to help Mama sort through over forty years of accumulated stuff.
“At the new house,” I would say, “you can streamline.”
“At the new house,” I would say, “you can focus more on function.”
But Mama just doesn’t have it in her. She would cover up the pipes on the back of a commode if Daddy would let her. Seriously. She’d go pick out some floral fabric, consult with a seamstress, and then pay somebody to make pipe cozies. She absolutely would.
And trying to convince her that it’s perfectly fine for a thermostat to be visible is like trying to teach a cat to bark. It goes against the natural order of the universe.
At least now, in the new house, the massive book cabinet that’s covering the thermostat is out of the line of traffic. You don’t have to worry about taking out a chunk of your shin while trying to walk around it, but you do have to find a flashlight and then shine it behind the bookcase in order to read the thermostat settings. This process drives Daddy to complete distraction but leaves Mama sighing with contentment, as does the sage green velour throw that’s artfully draped across an inoperable wall heater in their den.
This past weekend D. was helping me make up the bed at Mama and Daddy’s house, something he hasn’t done very often because the intricacy of Mama’s bed-making system can be a little intimidating. All things considered, he was doing pretty well; after almost ten years of marriage to me, he understands that the process is far more elaborate than pulling a bedspread over some pillows. He realizes that on my mama’s side of the family, making up the bed means that it’s time to put on your protective goggles and get ready to do some hard labor. It’s not for the faint of heart.
As we were working on pulling up layer-o-cover #4, Mama swooped into the room and picked up the pillows we’d slept on the night before. I didn’t think a thing of it because I know the routine, but D. paused for just a second and said, “Hey. Your mama just took all the pillows. What’s she doing with them?”
“Putting them in the closet,” I said.
“Putting them in the closet? Why?” he asked.
“Because she doesn’t think they’re pretty enough to be on the bed.”
D. could not quit laughing. Even when he was getting into the shower several minutes later, I could hear him chuckling across the hall.
Several years ago my friend Daphne’s husband coined the phrase Stunt PillowsTM to refer to the purely decorative pillows, the ones that are often the very essence of form over function. They look great, for sure – but don’t you even think about using them for something as mundane as sleeping. That would never, ever do.
With that in mind, please examine the following three pictures:
Based on the photographic evidence, I feel it is appropriate – and dare I say, necessary – to christen my mama’s house as The Stunt Pillow PalaceTM of America.
If you’d like to take a tour, I can probably arrange it. I know she’d be delighted to show you how she concealed an unused electrical outlet in her kitchen by hanging a picture in front of it.
But don’t you even think about stretching out on one of her beds.
Not unless you make a trip to the Functional Pillow Closet first.
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