The Demise of the Traveling Pillow

"Glorious, stirring sight!" murmured Toad. . . . "The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today - in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped- always somebody else's horizons! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!" (Kenneth Grahame)

Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage (Regina Nadelson)

NOT I-NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself (Walt Whitman)

Little by little, one travels far (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Have pillow, will travel…

I have a Special-Pillow which I have had since childhood(?). She is a feather pillow. She is a rather thin, scrawny elderly pillow. I can’t sleep without her. So she has travelled and flown all over the world with me. Whenever I travel, S-P has to be squashed into my luggage, sometimes causing rearrangement or discarding of items of ‘planned’ wardrobe…

S-P has been washed and tumble-dried many times over the years, leaving a surfeit of feathers in the machine which shower around the laundry or kitchen like fairy snow. Actually it is quite messy and difficult to clean.

Recently as I climbed into bed one evening and snuggled down, S-P felt a bit hard in the middle. I felt . It felt as though I had a tiny baby rabbit under my chin! I sleepily thought: I hope Lily has not been burying her ‘toys’ from Izzi in my pillow case. (Please note that Lily has been known to ‘bury’ things amongst my pillows). I turned S-P over and went to sleep. Some time in the night I woke with a start: I was definitely lying on a dead baby rabbit. It smelt exactly like dead baby rabbit and I gingerly felt about the pillow. It felt like a dead baby rabbit! Muttering loudly I ungraciously pushed S-P onto the ground and covered my head with the duvet. I am rather grumpy when I get woken in the night by dead animal antics courtesy of Izzi or Lily.

In the morning, with trepidation, I gingerly felt the insides of S-P. My fingers told me there were at least two animal carcasses! However, on closer inspection I realised that there were no dead bodies. Only the clumps of ageing mouldy(?) feathers (who knows what I smelled in the night! The power of the imagination)!

Into the washing machine and tumble dryer went poor S-P. At the end of this undignified process (it took the entire day in the tumble dryer for her to dry out) I came to a distressing realisation: S-P has come to the end of her lifespan! 

Thank you my dear Special-Pillow for being a source of comfort, for allowing me to snuggle my head against you each night with numerous turning-overs during the night so my face is always against your cold side. Thank you for cradling my head when I shed tears. Thank you for enveloping my face with your softness, molding to my curves. Thank you not minding being shoved into numerous travel bags; for supporting my back during journeys in cars and planes. Thank you for all the years we have spent together; for watching me change and grow and develop over the decades.  I salute you! 

Disclaimer: No pillows were abused or stuffed with dead animals in reality or in the re-enactment of the Travelling Pillow for the photo shoot. The pillow in the photos is a stand-in and not the actual S-P. And all the ‘Locations’ are actually in my house-in-the-country.