Tuesday Hania and drove out to IKEA to get a duvet for our bed. I had been a strict sheet-and-quilt man for most of my life, despite four years spent in Europe, but a recent stay in a New York apartment, owned by a Polish woman, convinced me of the superiority of the duvet. There is no sheet to get tangled, no bother with layers, just one light but insulating cover. It makes getting in and out of bed, which I do with more frequency as I get older, infinitely easier.
Not surprisingly, there was a large selection of duvets, each with a painted thermometer on the plastic packaging to show its degree of warmth. We got the second warmest. Then we chose a cover: white with a series of black geometrical designs.
It was only when we got home, and put the duvet in the cover, and then on the bed, that I noticed that the black lines, overlapping and repeated, were of the Dala horse, the most famous piece of Swedish folk art. (It is to Sweden what the Barcelos rooster is to Portugal.) I recognized it because we had one in our house when I was growing up – brought by a Swede on a Rotary Club exchange – and years later, I spent Midsummer in Dalarna, the central region of Sweden from which the horse comes (like much of the country’s folk art). The design made the duvet even more welcome.
