💬 Clean bedsheets are the best part of a bad day

Thursday was a 12 hour day. A client meeting moved 3 times and my phone didn't stop till 8 pm. I came home, ate standing up in the kitchen, and walked into the bedroom without switching the light on. My wife had changed the sheets that afternoon. Light blue ones, still smelling of the detergent. I fell onto the bed and said ahh out loud like an old man. My younger daughter heard it from the hall. She came and stood at the door. She said, Dad, are you dead? I said, no, I'm on clean sheets. She thought about that for a second and went back to her cartoons. She didn't ask anything else. I never noticed this as a kid. My mother changed the sheets in our house every Sunday and I hated it. We had to carry our pillows to the roof while she pulled the beds apart and shook everything out. Now I do the same thing on Sundays, in a flat on the 6th floor, with no roof. I carry the pillows to the balcony and stand there like I'm guarding them. The neighbour waves at me. My elder daughter says it's a waste of time. She sleeps on the same sheets for 3 weeks. I changed hers last month without telling her. She said her bed felt different and couldn't say why. Last night I slept 8 hours straight. I haven't done that since the Eid holidays. Tomorrow is Sunday, so the balcony will be full of pillows again and the neighbour will wave again. My mother called in the evening and asked what I did today. I told her I changed the sheets. She went quiet and then said, good, and asked if I'd shaken them out properly first.

Dad, are you dead? I laughed so hard that my wife asked what I was reading.

Sheets work on me too, but my thing is the smell of the first rain on a hot road. Last June, on a trip home, I was stuck at a signal in Banjara Hills after a rotten day, window open. That smell came in and I just sat there, ignoring the horns going off behind me. Got honked at for a full minute. Totally worth it, and nobody even changed my sheets.