The nights are warming up, so it is time for this one. When you make the bed, is there a top sheet between you and the doona, or do you sleep straight under the cover?
I know people in three tribes here, and this one splits along age lines more than any question I have asked.
The first tribe would not sleep without a top sheet.
Fitted sheet, top sheet, then the blanket or the doona, and the top sheet gets turned down over the edge so the cover never touches your chin.
Ask them why and they look at you as if you asked why they wash.
The second tribe gave the top sheet up years ago.
Fitted sheet, doona with a cover, done.
You wash the cover, it is one less thing to tuck in, and the top sheet always ended up in a ball at the bottom of the bed anyway.
The third tribe change with the weather. Top sheet only in summer, doona only in winter, and a few weeks each spring and autumn where nobody in the house can agree.
Now, a fair bit of this is simply what your mother did. Most of us make a bed the way it was made for us, and we do not question it until we share a bed with somebody who was raised the other way. But I think it tells you something else too, and it is about ritual.
The top sheet tribe like a layer between them and the world, and they like the small nightly ceremony of turning it down. The no top sheet tribe want the fewest possible steps between them and sleep.
And the seasonal tribe are the negotiators, they will keep the ritual as long as it earns its place. None of them is wrong, and every one of them sleeps fine. But every one of them is a small picture of how that person handles the little rituals that hold a day together.
So, top sheet or no top sheet, and which way were you raised?
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