Clean White Sheets

A very dear friend once asked me several years back, "If you could have anything in the world, no matter the cost, what would it be?"

I pondered for a few minutes, thinking about the endless options that this open-ended question/scenario could entail... no matter the cost, nothing off limits. While I was thinking, my friend answered what she would want, an answer I entertain many would echo--travel the world, see new places and sights, then boat for a stretch. I nodded, smiling at her worldly and sophisticated answer.

"That sounds nice," I replied, thinking of how that response would simply never cross my mind nor exit my lips because it is not something I have ever or currently desire.

She nodded.

I pondered my response and desire for a few moments more until what I wanted to possess came to me as gently and easily as a spring breeze graces a bed of roses.

"I'd like a clean apartment with never-ending and always clean, fresh white towels, clean white sheets, and never having to do anything myself to make these things happen."

"That's what you want, Rachel? So, like to live in a hotel of sorts? Is that it?" she clarifyingly inquired.

"Mmhmm, yeah, that is what I want."

"Okay, fair enough."

The conversation on our "big dreams and lofty lives" (quotes clearly intentional here) ended then, at that. My if-you-could-have-anything-in-the-world dream, however, did not end there, nor did it leave me...ever.

And now, as I sit on this chair in Denver, just feet away from my bedroom, in which the white sheets are constantly and seemingly never-endingly changed from fresh to even fresher on a daily basis, the conversations of days passed strikes me. The bathroom, too, just a few feet away, rife with closets of perfectly folded, clean fresh towels on a daily, nightly, and all-the-time-ly basis.

No matter the cost, no matter the struggle, the irony boils my being as the stiflingly hot Colorado air infiltrates my now mostly inside soul.

So here I am and here I sit on this light blue chair looking up at the lighter blue evening sky in the West (Led Zeppelin reference if you please) on this hellishly hot night. I muse at my own circle of wishes for things attainable and yet previously seemingly not so, my cycle of thoughts and dreams and days and years, and the circle of life and lives.

With love, grace, humility and authenticity,
Rachel (fill in the blank) Berg

rbb or rvb...tbd