Diagonals

After a struggle, the quilt is finally inside the duvet cover.

Corners define shapes. They are guides when inserting one similar shape into another. Grabbing and holding on to matching adjacent and diagonal corners is most important in some tasks. 

Last week, after washing our quilt and duvet cover, David and I attempted once again to put the former inside the latter. The procedure involves a series of steps. First I turn the cover inside out so I can get a firm hold on the top two corners. While I hold tightly to the quilt corners through the cover, it is David’s job to slide the duvet top down to the bottom right-side out and over the quilt. Then the final step is for me to hold tightly to the top cover and quilt corners while David does the same at the bottom, at which point we both shake the quilt vigorously to help everything align correctly.

It shouldn’t be too difficult — unless I hold two diagonally-wrong corners, as I did this time. Because we have a small bedroom, I usually stand on the bed while we maneuver this feat together.

Since the last time we did our duvet dance, we had purchased memory foam for the top of our mattress. I discovered the new surface makes balance difficult when grabbing and shaking. In the confusion of mismatched corners and foam that remembered steps I didn’t want it to remember, I lost my balance and rolled around on the bed.

Instead of tossing out a few four-letter words, giggles erupted. And, since they are contagious, giggles reached out to David and tickled him, too. Help — hahaha — I've fallen on my bed —hahaha — and I can't — hahaha — get up! There we were with a confused mass of quilt and duvet cover, laughing our heads off.

Being adults, however, and recognizing that we had a chore to complete, we went about correcting our mistakes — with some extra giggles thrown in — and finally got the cover on. With a few shakes as we firmly held our correct corners, this time everything fell into place and I remained standing tall on the bed. 

Our mistakes leading to uncontrollable laughter felt so good. This was a simple release in an everyday moment, an example of making mistakes together, losing balance, losing control and then discovering everything works out okay, especially if some laughter is tossed into the recipe. 

David and I will soon celebrate our 37^th wedding anniversary. During these years together, we’ve mixed up diagonals and lost balance but sometimes the tumbles are fun and ultimately laughter balances the equation.

Note: If you prefer a more tame experience, this video shows how one person can make this a boring chore without the comedy: https://youtu.be/DRPfudNNd8Y