A (Pillow) Case of the Human Condition: Time to Crack Open That Hope Chest and Live a Little

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I waited too long to get married. By the time Jon and I said our vows, the contents of my hope chest were hopelessly outdated. Unusable.

There wasn’t all that much in my hope chest when I got married, just a few pillowcases hand embroidered by my grandmother, a woman who was born way, way back in the nineteenth century, when girls still collected fancy table linens, sheets and towels in anticipation of the day they’d marry and start households of their own.

By the time I was a teenager, however — this would be the mid-twentieth century Midwest — the hope chest tradition had pretty much gone the way of knickers and corsets, so I didn’t have an actual hope chest, just a shelf in my bedroom closet. But I did have a substantial collection of hand-embroidered pillow cases from my grandmother.

She’d sent me a pair every Christmas for years, and each time she did, I wrote a nice thank-you note and stored the pretty things away.

They would be my trousseau, I decided. I’d save them up until I was married and my Real Life could begin. When that time came, I’d share my pretty pillow cases with my husband and our most special houseguests. Bed sheets were always white in those days, and the pillowcases with their delicate embroidered edges would bring color to my marriage bed and to our guest room.

Unfortunately, by the time 1977 rolled around and Jon and I finally began our life together, white bed sheets had gone the way of big Sunday dinners right after church and nylon stockings with seams up the back. All the department stores at the time were showing bright, boldly colored sheets with big blocky prints.

Crisp white sheets? A thing of the past. Dainty, flowered pillowcases? Fussy and sentimental. My trousseau pillowcases with their daisy chains and sprigs of orange blossom? An embarrassment. The very idea of a trousseau – still more embarrassment. I hid the pillowcases away and bought a set of Marimekko sheets at Macy’s.

As a result, after thirty some years of marriage, I continue to be the owner of a dozen or so beautiful, hand-embroidered, virginal pillowcases. I’ve had them in my possession for a half century. And I’ve never used them.

Over the years, Jon and I moved from a double bed, to a queen sized bed, to a king. Sheets were purchased, used till threadbare, then ripped up and stuffed in the rag bag. Children were born. They slept in cribs. They slept in bunk beds. They slept in sleeping bags. They went off to college and slept on extra-long sheets in extra-long dorm beds.

But every Christmas when it came time to dig through the linen closet for the Christmas stockings, I’d come across Grandma Falconer’s hand-made pillow cases and feel sad. Chain stitch, satin stitch, cross stitch, French knot — her handiwork was so careful, so loving, so Midwestern, so out of synch with my West Coast life style.

But in time styles changed. Eventually, I lost interest in the big, bold patterns of my newlywed years. I took to buying plain pastel blue and green sheets with interchangeable blue and green pillowcases. At our house, pillowcases are like socks – a pair goes into the wash and only one comes out, its mate gone missing. It’s simpler to make the beds up with plain pastel colors.

Meanwhile, the faithful pillow cases continued to turn up every Christmas. Pretty, I’d think when I spotted them in their linen wrapping under the Christmas stockings. Old-fashioned, but pretty. And really, they are treasures. Heirlooms practically. In fact, they’re too good to use every day. I’ll just put them back on their shelf in the linen closet and save them for a really special occasion.

More years go by. Lots of them. Until, finally last week, getting ready for houseguests – my son Peter and his girlfriend from Minnesota – once again I was short a pillowcase or two. And there they were in the linen closet buried under the Christmas stockings as always: Grandma’s lovely old hand-embroidered pillowcases with their trilliums and marguerites and vines of ivy.

I thought to myself, if Peter and his girlfriend don’t qualify as our most special houseguests, who does?

I pulled the pillowcases off the shelf. I picked out the prettiest pair. I dropped them into the washing machine.

Grandma’s pillowcases had been waiting forty years for my Real Life to begin — I thought they might want to freshen up a bit.

If you enjoyed this post you can share it with friends by clicking on the Facebook, Twitter or Email icons below. And — you can read more of my thoughts on  long-distance parenting at “Geographic Mobility in America — Watching My Kids Disappear.”