Looking out my Backdoor: My Magic Bed Jacket

My bed jacket. It is a sign. A portent of things to come.

Christmas Eve, I went to Oconahua for a traditional Mexican feast of tamales and hot chocolate with my friends. When I returned home, a gift bag stuffed tightly with something rather heavy, sat on my patio table. I reached in and pulled out … a jacket.

This jacket is made of that plush, fluffy stuff, like a baby blanket. Thank goodness it is not a pale pastel. I’d have to gift it onward. No, amazingly, the jacket is patterned in a boxy red and brown cowboy-type plaid. And, it has a hood. I love it.

When I first held the jacket, I pictured myself wearing it while walking Lola. I put it on for size. Nice fit. Hung my new jacket on the coat closet, which in my limited space, is a pole with prongs for six jackets or sweaters and a hat.

As I prepared for bed, somehow the jacket skewed its way into my thoughts. Hmmm, I said, removing it from the coat stand, and putting it on over my night shirt. A bed jacket. A perfect bed jacket. I climbed into bed with my book.

Understand, I’ve never had a bed jacket. Bed jackets appear in British novels and Hollywood movies from the ’30s and ’40s. Bed jackets are filmy, wafting, woven of air and a few silky threads, pastel and pretty, for the rich and privileged. Not that I would ever admit to being limited in my thinking. I certainly never imagined myself in a bed jacket. Not me.

I didn’t allow myself to realize until that very moment I put it on that I had actually wanted a bed jacket, perhaps subliminally I had always wanted a bed jacket, and that this plaid bed jacket was the perfect gift for me.

No matter how warm my main room is, my bedroom is always cool. On cold winter nights, while I read a few chapters, I carefully tuck the bedding around my shoulders and snake one hand outside the covers to hold the Kindle. That was then.

Now, I sit in bed, covers around my legs, my new bed jacket keeping my top half toasty warm. Ah, such comfort. Such luxury. Such privilege.

As this year comes to an ending (Thank you. I never thought you’d leave.) and the new year is born and toddles into January, it is fitting that I consider my new bed jacket a sign, a portent of changes to come.

I like signs and portents. Tea leaves. Chicken intestines. Clouds in the sky. Oracles. They are all good. They all work.

Several years ago I was complaining to a dear friend about a situation in which I need to make a choice. “I don’t know what I want to do. Either option looks good to me and I just can’t choose.”

This man, a Harvard Law graduate, mind you, not a woo-woo bone in his body, dug a coin out of his pocket. “Heads is Option A and tails for option B. You call it.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t believe in that kind of magic.”

“Just call it,” he replied.

“Tails.”

He flipped the coin, it landed on my choice. “OK, does that make you feel happy with the decision or do you wish the coin had landed on heads?’

Ah. I got it. Flipping a coin is just one way of letting my silly self see what I really want when I can’t make up my mind because both options look great and my head had gone into over-think.

That’s how I see my new bed jacket as a sign of changes to come. If I can jog my attitude toward a simple article of clothing out of the historical box into which I had locked it, what other attitudes might I be able to change in the year to come? Oh, the excitement! Oh, the anticipation.

Thank you, Dear Crinita, for the gift which is changing my winter life.

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email [email protected].