Before I became a mother, I was naked all the time. Well, not all the time. But a lot. At home I didn’t bother to dress. When it was cold I draped a blanket around me and was perfectly fine that way.

Now that I’m a mom, I dress during the day. Something about teaching my kid to wear clothes. At night I still go to bed in the nude. My daughter asked me once why I get to sleep naked and she has to wear nightclothes. I said, because I stay under the covers and she kicks the covers off in the middle of the night, and she’d get cold if she wasn’t wearing any nightclothes. That answer satisfied her, though once in a while on a whim she goes to bed naked and that’s all right with me. How could I begrudge her the wonderful feeling of bare skin against silk sheets?

Despite my dressing during the day, there was a stage when my daughter ran around naked at home refusing to be dressed. And it didn’t matter how cold it was. Like me, she would run around wearing a blanket around her on cold days. It made me wonder if habits like that could be passed on chromosomally.

I remember one particular instance, when a roof repair guy was supposed to come over and my then four-year-old refused to get dressed. It really bothered Jay so much that she wouldn’t dress, and he yelled at her so terribly. The roof guy didn’t even need to come in the house, he was up on the roof and really had no view of her. I thought it was more embarrassing that Jay was bellowing so much.

Jay is not comfortable with nakedness at all. Most of all his own. Sure he sleeps naked, sort of out of necessity, because he is a furnace! The man burns hot in bed, literally. But you will never find him lounging around without his clothes on. It’s very rare he even has his socks off. It has to be a very hot day before he’d bare any part of his body. It must be his strict New England upbringing.

Not that I was raised by heathens. I had just as strict a childhood as his. I grew up in Catholic Philippines. No one walks around naked there. We always had household help, so it’s a little strange to be nude around them.

Lately I’ve been wearing pajamas to bed. For the past month or so Jay and I have been sleeping in separate bedrooms. I get cold all alone in bed. Sometimes he begins the night sleeping with me, warming my sheets, heating me up to orgasm. But at some point in the wee hours of the morning he goes back to his bedroom so he can sleep more solidly the rest of the night. When he does, my sheets are warm enough and I can sleep nude till morning.

I really like being naked. I don’t prefer nudity to clothing. I like clothes, too. Clothing can really fire up the imagination, create seductive scenarios, express personal style. But once in a while I like the innocence of nudity. No make up, no jewelry, just skin touching the world all around me. Naked as the day I was born.