Domestic tasks are best when given the attention they deserve. Preparing a meal for a lover on a special occasion has its own gravity; nervousness, anticipation of pleasure, intimacy - it barely qualifies as a domestic task. The standing life-support activities like vacuuming and laundry have almost no weight. They float in and out of our attention almost invisibly. They rise to our awareness only as an annoyance or with unplanned urgency.

But there is also the possibility that sometimes such tasks materialize with a heft and smell that pushes out from behind the background noise of our lives.

Folding a fitted sheet can do that.

Designed to defeat the sensibilities of those who need order, crispness and snap, fitted sheets lean more toward wadding than any other storage system. Maybe that's why hotels generally use only flat sheets. An industrial setting is hostile to the anarchy of a fitted sheet. I admire them for that.

We (fitted sheets and I) have come to some small understanding.

Remove the sheet from the dryer, warm and smelling clean. Place your hand inside one corner and slide your other hand down the long side of the sheet and slip it into the second corner. Place one inside the other, nesting the seams together. Reach down and do the same thing with the other two corners, then neatly pocket all four corners together, keeping the seams aligned. Lay this new assembly down on the table lengthwise and gently smooth out the captured air. Take the corner opposite the collected corners and fold it over on top of the corners. Double again, once in each direction.

The identity of the sheet remains intact. It will not allow you to overcome its character to bunch up and randomly pleat but it grants you the pleasure of order and some degree of efficiency.

Personifying the inanimate world is never a profitable enterprise. But I have found that by granting it its due (as best I can discern) allows me into a place of attention to a real place in the world.

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