A dizzy state of multiple dimension consciousness

Sheets, two under-sized, four sheets on the line, all white, half stolen from lost boxes, one like muslin, one linen, one is of a number of single soft almost woolly cotton with a diagonal grain originating from my grandmother Elizabeth’s “bottom drawer” 1929 [stuff that women collected for when they got married] On the other line, a crocheted bedspread also white with a few holes, that my grandmother Ruth had gotten a female acquaintance to make for her because she had admired the very much finer one that my mother had rescued from the burning of her Great Aunt’s effects and during my early life, it covered my parents’ bed. I was fascinated by the interconnecting web of strands of the finer version (now lost) and my age five exploration of it involved snipping through one of them with my mother’s nail scissors! Penetrating chastisement had come my way from my mother, who had no idea why I would ruin the thing, no understanding of how cutting one of the connections enabled me to feel the thickness and strength, the unravelling of fibres revealing something of how they had been interlocked and the sudden slackening of the patterned structure. I realised that in the “snipping” act, I had risked the peace of my own life and had tried to hide the scissors and cover the hole but soon she had caught me and I couldn’t tell her then, I believed her version that simply meant that I was wicked, I was deep in shame and forgot my own reasons and now I’m not going to bring it up because she will still be living in her definition of what happened and will trumpet the words “You were a Little Bugger!” and my explanation would be completely lost on her.

The following day finds me carrying the plastic washing basket across the road with the newly washed and dried bed-sheets and mattress cover, to the room – now guest room, with notions of Grandmother Ruth, who knew the cardinal importance of bedding in creating a professional room for paying guests. I have only surmised this because Gran told my child self, “I absolutely ALWAYS change the bedding between guests!”, I also remember her purchasing a roller iron specifically for bed-sheets, which was a thing like a huge electric heated mangle (there is something like it for finishing photographs) so the bed sheets went through and came out crisp and flat. There had been a discussion with my mother at the time, who was aghast at the thought of ironing bedding and must have missed the point of creating an assuring impression that the guest was about to enter sheets that had not been in contact with bodies of unknown others – since a very stiff washing procedure!
So I thought of my small Gran Ruth who spoke in an attempted gentrification of a cockney accent, as I tried to do a smart job of making the bed, though unlike when the actor came, I had not ironed the pillowcase and knew that Ruth’s job would have been harder, smarter, tighter and quicker than mine. However after laying her crocheted white bedspread (also washed) on top of the duvet, I decided to sew up the frayed parts where the crocheting had come undone or broken. I left and returned with white cotton, needle and scissors. I had realised that it would be possible to hone down upon the actual detail of the pattern and almost as quickly as an indiscriminate sewing up, I could reconstruct the pattern that had come undone! The three holes that I had at first noticed became about eight holes as I carefully traversed the surface. And yes, I was able to match up the pattern, which when finished and I looked at what it actually was, almost sent me into a dizzy state of multiple dimension consciousness because the tessellations consisted of four diamond shapes around a crossed intersection of horizontal and vertical lines, which ran the whole length of the plane of bedspread. In one way of looking, each four diamonds were wider than tall, but shifting to the next up by half a four cluster, the arrangement was four diamonds that were taller than wide! The shift was in a perceptual frame of reference and the only way to see a firm “reality” was to see the quilt as made up of squares (which is how it actually was constructed) and along the edge line internal to each of the four sides of the square, lay half a diamond!