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| Bedsheet by Elina Brotherus |
When she opened the bedroom curtains that morning in September, 2020, she saw something she had never seen before: the sky was an eerie Dark Orange, almost as dark as night, and for a moment it seemed like their house had been transported by aliens to another planet, Venus maybe, though she quickly noticed that all the nearby houses were still in place, with all their lights turned on and shining in the Orange Darkness, so she guessed the Dark Orange Sky must have something to do with climate change and the drought-caused wildfires encircling her city in the San Francisco Bay Area
(yes, she learned later, it turned out that the typical summer fog had come in from the Pacific Ocean and had settled in a layer above the smoke from the wildfires that had been burning for the last week, and the larger smoke particles below the fog were scattering the sunlight at longer wavelengths than air did, making the sky appear orange instead of blue)
(the virus was still raging and there were no vaccines yet, which meant the only two places that were safe for them to be were inside their own house or outdoors, but for the last week, the smoke from the fires had caused the air quality in their area to reach dangerous levels, which meant that anywhere outdoors was dangerous as well as indoor spaces with other people in them, so they were trapped inside their own house, without air conditioning or the ability to open any windows)
not to mention the upcoming, divisive presidential election and racial strife in the US
(which was causing such an excruciating mix of emotions, including fear, despair, anger, and hope, that she was on a temporary news fast)
but after breakfast, she couldn’t resist checking her social media feed to see how others in her area were dealing with the Dark Orange Sky, and she saw a post from someone from another area of the country—one that was obviously not on fire—that included a diagram about how to properly fold an elasticized fitted sheet, and she thought, hey, I always wanted to learn to do that, so she ran downstairs and grabbed one of her mashed-up bottom sheets and refolded it according to the instructions—the results were perfect—and as she stood there admiring the rather attractive rectangle she had just created, she was shot through with a tiny burst of happiness—then, wait, how can I, she thought—as a wave of guilt rushed through her—be happy even for a minute on a day like this one—when this Dark Orange Sky is making the world seem downright apocalyptic—it feels like committing some kind of crime—but then she looked down again at the folded fitted sheet she was holding and felt another tiny burst of happiness so she opened the linen closet, set the perfect sheet on the shelf, and took out a second fitted sheet to fold, realizing that she could keep her few minutes of happiness on this terrible day a secret and no one would ever have to know.
I love this story for so many reasons.
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