The Parable of the Pillow People

Guys, it finally happened.

The sleep, I mean. Knock on wood, but I’m sleeping again.

I was getting to the point where my brain resembled the crumbling ruins of some once-majestic estate, like whatever moldy manor was in Great Expectations or Wuthering Heights. I don’t actually remember much about either book, just the feeling-tone of gray skies and decaying Victorian grandeur.

Chunks of my sanity, logic, and clarity of thought were shedding daily. (My hair too, but that’s a separate postpartum battle.) The locals were starting to whisper to each other, “Tread very carefully. She’s unsound.”

On a recent trip to NYC, I was unable to determine when, where, or how to feed myself lunch, despite being extremely hungry. I was spending the day between Tribeca and Chelsea, and yet I booked a hotel near Grand Central “to be in the heart of it all” like a grade A jabroni.

And then… salvation arrived, tenderly enclosed in wrapping paper stamped with indeterminate constellations, tucked in a brown paper bag.

“You might not want to open this here,” V whispered. We were seated in Grey Dog, contemplating whether to buy the completely rationally priced $20 avocado toast or the $18 egg-and-cheese croissant.

“Maybe just tear a little corner,” she suggested.

Images raced through my mind. What scandalous object had my beloved childhood friend bought me? A banned book? An adult toy?

As it turns out, the second guess wasn’t so far off.

It only took a tiny tear to reveal a shock of yellow yarn. I gasped.

There she was, only decades delayed. My very own Pillow Person: a rectangular pillow with a giant cartoon face and stubby fabric arms and legs — the pinnacle of 80s comfort and consumerism and the object of five year old me’s most fervent obsession.

We rode home together that afternoon on the Metro-North. My Pillow Person was indeed the platonic ideal of an extremely low-maintenance friend as I mentally reviewed my insecurity du jour: At the previous night’s events did I come off as tired yet thoughtful or as a standoffish b***h?

If only I’d had her for the past 35 years. What would be different? Would anything be the same?

My 5 year old son cackled as he fully unwrapped her from the star-strewn paper.

“What even is this, bruh??”

A few nights later, he chucked the Pillow Person into my daughter’s crib, unbeknownst to me. And like a face-printed polyester seed planted in the fertile soil of her star-printed muslin sheet, we found my daughter playing with her joyfully the next morning, watered only by one hour of tears from our fourth attempt at sleep training.

Much like psychedelics, my Pillow Person worked on multiple timelines at once - giving both my inner 5 year old the object of her inexplicable longing and my actual 11 month old a friend so she wouldn’t feel so lonely in her room.

Is there a moral to the story? I’m still working that out:

Perhaps something about the uncanny wisdom of the people who know us best?

Or that the object I was deprived of as a child is what my child most needed?

Maybe we all just need our (pillow) person?

Regardless, I’m sleeping, and it’s magic, and I’m so grateful for that damn Pillow Person.

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