There was a Sale on Clouds

A friend once told me that the average person thinks about replacing their pillow for seven years before they actually do it. It seemed like a factual thing, something he’d read in a scholarly journal. He wasn’t just wisecracking. Still, seven years equivocating about new pillows seemed excessive to me.

I bought four pillows today. They are so big and puffy that I couldn’t keep them stuffed in the too-small bags the store gave me and so I dropped a pillow first in the parking lot and then on the sidewalk. I was also carrying a giant new comforter at the time.

Anyway, about the lead-up to the pillows. I have been thinking about the deep inadequacy of my pillows for a long time. They are flat and lifeless. I try to bunch them up so they have more heft, but they wilt. My pillows wilt. I’ve endured this situation for a very long time, maybe not seven years but possibly. Time flies when you’re my age.

A few days ago we stayed overnight at a nice hotel. The pillows were extremely pillowy. They were like the clouds you drew as a kid with the whitest crayon in the box right after you drew the sun in the corner of the paper and colored it the best yellow. The hotel pillows were that perfect.

I asked my husband the other morning, “Don’t you think we need new pillows?” as if we had to have a unanimous vote on this major investment. “No,” he said, “My pillows are fine.” He would say this if they were the consistency of a worn sock.

Because he said his own pillows were fine, I could have bought new pillows just for myself. But that seemed mean-spirited, like having him continue to sleep on his worn sock-like pillows was just desserts for his tolerance of inadequate pillows. Besides yesterday was his birthday.

We are very pillowy around here and I have only myself to thank.