While my brothers had bedding ordered from catalogues or bought from department stores, mine was specially made for my bedroom. My bedroom walls were pale pink -- so pale that it was nearly impossible to tell the color was there at all. The fabric for my curtains and quilted bedspread was also pink, but with large rose, fuschia and violet-colored flowers splashed across it. In retrospect, it seems rather Brady Bunch-ish, but back then, it was special.
Furthermore, as my mother pointed out to me, repeatedly, the quilting on my bedspread was not done in any conventional way. (In an exhaustive chapter on bedding, Martha Stewart explains that many comforters are quilted in box or channel stitches -- with the stitches all in straight lines.) Rather, a devoted seamstress had painstakingly stitched around random individual flowers -- with no straight lines at all. Every night, I was to carefully fold back this beautifully-stitched fabric, and every morning, I was to carefully spread it again across the bed. And I was never to sit, or play, on this extraordinary bedding.
As a good and obedient child, I did what I was told.
One can't remain a good and obedient child forever, though. At some point, my repressed evil nature simply had to come to the fore. Accordingly, I have become a bed-making rebel, and I really mustn't even blame myself for it. No, Mom and Dad, it's all your fault. After years of doing what was expected of me, I had no choice but to assert my independence in this deeply troubling way.
So, I love you both, but I have spread my wings. My walls now are painted in bright yellow and a nearly blinding red. I do not make my bed, except when I feel like it. It's my bed, in my home, with my rules. I am free to do as I please. I am strong. I am woman.
And Martha, you'll just have to learn to deal with it.
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