This is kinda-sorta a Seinfeld story. It's not that nothing of significance is happening in my life - I just feel compelled to share an observation about nothing.

There are moments - okay, maybe days and months and years - when I suddenly realize I'm weirder than I thought. (Mary-Kate knows what I'm talking about.)

Several years ago after I'd spent way too much money on fancy sheets with 100s of counts of *something mysterious* per inch, I realized I didn't like the slick feeling when my bed became a Slip and Slide. I yearned for the sheets of my mother's house and every other mother's mid-century house. They were heavy cotton, neither slick nor scratchy - just heavy and most likely un-ironed, and with the imagined or real scent of being line-dried.

So, several years ago I found a source for these kinds of mid-century sheets I liked so much. They cost a bundle - as much as the fancy sheets we'd all been suckered into. Well, at least that's how I felt. I blame Oprah for the sheet conspiracy and the 100s of counts of *something mysterious*.

I love my heavy cotton sheets that feel like they've been line-dried. I have two sets I alternate, but after quite a few years there are holes in both sets. My washer & dryer beat them like rugs on an African Veldt.

This is the part of this nothing story that gets weird.

Two days ago I tossed into the trash a pair of my waist-high cotton *big girls* because there was a teeny tiny hole. Good gracious - heaven forbid I wear *big girls* with a teeny tiny hole that no one will ever ever see. Yet, I tossed them.

On the other hand, my sheets can become doilies and I'll never discard them.

How odd we all can be - holding tight to memories through objects... and I think it's okay to be a little or maybe a lot weird about it.


*****


I recently wrote the following comment on Maggie's blog:

There are sounds my reminiscing heart remembers with fondness. The sound of a screen door slamming shut is pure music for my ears. During the warm months I'll sometimes invent reasons to go through my screened porch then through the screen door to the deck just to hear it slam. Sometimes I have no invented reason, so I just go to the door and open it and let it slam a couple of times. This odd action satisfies a yearning I can't properly describe. The slam of a screen door is so mid-century to my skewed sensibilities. TV's *Lassie* always had Timmy running into the house and letting the screen door slam. The *Waltons* also featured a slammed screen door or two or three or eight.

Maggie, You're probably wondering why I'm writing about screen doors.

The whistling of a winter wind has the same affect on me. My 15 year old home is hermetically sealed, so it seems. But the older homes we lived in while in Kansas had creaking floors and whistling cricks & cracks and old windows that were laced with ice in the morning.

All these events transport me to a comforting place, which is uncanny because none of them is truly comfortable in the way I think we ordinarily define comfort.

This was Maggie's response. She nailed it!:

I too feel comfort from the slammed screen door, the wind whistling, the frost on the window... and as you point out, it is not the way we ordinarily define comfort.

I have been feeling that way about a few things lately, and I came to the conclusion that I am longing for my childhood. It was a time and place in my life when the world seemed definable, where someone was in charge (my Mom), and where anything seemed possible. With some notable exceptions, I was shielded from the hatred and pettiness of the world. I associate those small sounds now with that time in my life when I was cared for, and the world seemed predictable yet unknowable, and stable.

It is interesting Reenie, this morning I walked into the bathroom, where we installed a painted pine floor last summer. It creaks!

I thought to myself, "How can we get rid of that creak."

Instantly I realized that I liked the creak. I like a house that talks to me, that interacts with the humans who live in it, that has a personality all its own.

*****

I was going to write more today about nothing, but I actually have nothing more to say at the moment.

Thanks for stopping by.