A short story

Kit had never seen anything like this in all of his years working in the self storage community. Watching from his office window as one load after another came in through the gate, he shook his head in awe as the new tenant unloaded pillows, one after the other, numbering into the thousands. Pillows? Why in the world would anyone have thousands of pillows? Who would have so many pillows that they needed a local furniture storage unit expressly devoted to their safe keeping?

In all of his years in this industry, he had seen some pretty interesting things going in and out of the units under his care. He watched with amusement as life sized mannequins were carried in to make their homes in the dark, enclosed units. He even assisted in the move in of an aging couples life long collection of cat statues and memorabilia of various kinds. But pillows? He just couldn’t imagine the reasoning behind such eccentricity. It was just one of lifes curiosities, he guessed, and something that he would probably never know or understand.

Later on that afternoon, as the last of the car loads of pillows were safely unloaded and the unit was closed and locked up with the tenants personal self storage hardware, Kit heard the bells on the door jingle as someone entered the office. He looked up from his desk to see the pillow man himself, coming in to ask a question about his monthly fee. Kit assisted the man and answered his questions, providing the excellent customer service that his company was known for. Before the man left, however, Kit just couldnt help himself. He asked the man why he had so many pillows. The answer that he received had left him humbled.

The pillows had belonged to the mans Mother, who had recently passed away. When his mother had been a young girl, her parents were very poor. So poor, in fact, that the girl never, in all of her childhood years, had a bed to sleep on or a pillow upon which to rest her head. She had slept on a bundle of sheets on the floor, a towel under her head for comfort, and so it went until the girl was ten years old, and her father finally found steady work that afforded them lifes necessities.

For the rest of her life, the woman collected pillows. They held such a special significance to her that she not only collected them, but she also donated them, by the hundreds, to homeless shelters and families in need, and she had done so for over fifty years, until her death. These pillows meant more to this mans Mother than any other belonging that she had owned, and that was why he had chosen to keep them.

After the man left, Kit though long and hard about the man and his Mother. He never ceased to learn something new in his job, dealing with people and their belongings like he did. To him, the self storage community was like a social classroom, a veritable education of what makes people live, act and think the way that they do. It was a classroom that he enjoyed being a part of.

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