The Great Pillow Wars of the 90s

Luke, Matt, me, Katie & our Grandma (Barbara Hoag)

In a family where rosary beads dangled from rearview mirrors and tempers flared like Irish whiskey, every gathering felt like a reunion and a riot rolled into one. Growing up in a staunch Irish Catholic family, gatherings were always lively—if not downright chaotic. On my mom’s side, I was smack in the middle of twelve grandkids: three siblings, eight cousins, and me.

Katie, Luke, Matt and me

Whether my aunts and uncles were engaged in their signature sibling squabbles—equal parts passive-aggressive and theatrical—or the women in the family were sipping on martinis while the in-laws, who married into the family, either threw their hands in the air or quietly sipped on gossip from afar, things were never dull. 

But what I’d always revel in most were the secret pillow fights my older sister Katie, older cousins Matt and Luke, and I would have in the dark each time. And it’d always happen the same way—one of us would pass another in the hallway, exchanging a time and location as if incognito. It was a secret mission the grownups could not know about. Every time: “Three o’clock. Luke’s room,” or “Five o’clock. guest room.” Don’t make eye contact. Don’t stop. Keep moving so as not to draw attention and blow our cover. This was classified information. And we’d always pass on the message to the others in the same way. Just some regular 007 Bond agents.

Missing Matt in this picture

Because truth be told, we couldn’t let the younger cousins in on it—they’d get hurt and cry to the grownups. And the older cousins? We always thought they were far too sophisticated and cool for silly childish games. So it was just us four—the ones in the middle of the line of twelve grandkids.

As the time drew near, I’d make my way down the hallway—be it my grandparents' long hallway, thick with the scent of old books and pipe tobacco, or my aunt and uncle’s house, riddled with family pictures on the wall as I passed. My favorite place for these top-secret pillow fights was always my cousin Luke’s room. Luke’s room was a classic '90s kid bedroom—complete with Legos, a pile of stuffed animals (or what kids today call plushies), countless Star Wars figurines, and a Luke Skywalker comforter. The shelves were the quintessential floating shelves, always piled with too much weight and testing the laws of physics.

Matt and me

As soon as the four of us were in—the two brothers against the two sisters—we’d each stake out a corner in the room, armed with our weapon—oh, I mean pillow—of choice. Lights out. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling flickered faintly as we crouched in position, grinning through the shadows with the giddy anticipation of chaos.

And then: mayhem.

From there, it was no man’s land—an all-out brawl. A swing and a miss, and you’d hear a karate trophy clatter to the floor. “Ouch!” A pillow whizzed past my face with the velocity of a Nerf missile gone rogue. Darth Vader toppled over in the chaos. “Ahhh!” Slam! Bash! Crash! The bed bounced beneath us like an inflatable jump house, and we leapt with the reckless confidence of kids convinced we were invincible—timing our jumps to collide with whoever had the misfortune of being on the downbeat. Someone flew from the bed to the floor to launch a surprise attack on an unsuspecting opponent. Others got pinned, caught in a giggly chokehold that wouldn’t pass legal clearance in the WWE, until surrender was declared—but somehow still ended in laughter. We scrambled, flailed, dove, and swung, lost in a sea of shrieks and stuffed polyester.

Missing Katie here

Interestingly—and ironically—I was often the reigning champ. Me: the youngest of the four, the quiet one with thick forehead bangs, and even thicker glasses, and all the unsuspecting rage of a kid who got the crust piece at lunch. At home, sandwiched between two louder, needier siblings, I often faded into the background—a bit of a wallflower by default. But in those moonlit missions, something shifted. Maybe it was pent-up frustration. Maybe it was rebellion. Either way, the “quiet good girl” came swinging, and suddenly I had the power. Call me a silent assassin if you will. Pillows became equalizers, and I was a pint-sized force to be reckoned with. I wasn’t just included—I felt seen. And I swung hard.

Matt & me

But like all good things, even our covert chaos had an expiration date. As the younger siblings and cousins started catching on to our secret missions, the whispers in the hallway got riskier. Suddenly, the "classified" nature of our pillow fights was under siege. We'd try to throw them a bone—“Okay, okay… you can play. But you have to stay in this corner and just keep swinging. Don’t. Move.” They always moved. And inevitably, someone would get clobbered. A pillow to the face, a little too hard. A collision mid-jump. A dramatic thud followed by shrieks and tears. Then came the tattling. “Moooom! They hit me!” Cue the lights flicking on, the interrogation, the scolding, and worst of all—the shutting down of the operation. That definitely marked the beginning of the end of our legendary pillow fight era, as the four of us shifted from childhood, to the adolescents of junior high. 

Time, like those pillow fights, moved fast and without warning. Decades proceed, eras of lifetimes gone and in the rearview mirror, and flashes of fleeting memories later, we find ourselves well into the independence of adulthood and deep into our careers. Some of us with a mortgage and family. One elbow deep with half a litter of kids and homeschooling, One enjoying the freedom of travel, higher education and single life. One navigating a separation, divorce and custody of children. And one who lives an alternative lifestyle out of state, and disowned themselves from the family completely.

Luke, his first born, and me

We’ve said goodbye and buried those very grandparents who made us cousins, and the West Anaheim house on Lindacita Lane that once echoed with our laughter now belongs to another family—though I swear the ghosts of our childhood games still whisper through the halls and walls of that house. 

Even though Matt and Luke are my older cousins, I’ve always looked at them as a set of second siblings. And aren’t cousins just that anyway? In this case, they were like a pair of older second brothers. Those memories of our secret pillow fight missions are some of my favorite childhood memories, and despite the fact we can’t roughhouse like we did when we were single-digit ages, what endures is the playfulness we somehow still manage to keep—threaded through teasing conversations and inside jokes at family gatherings. Despite our wildly different views on just about everything, we all seem to agree on one thing: our family is chaotic. But I’m glad for them—even with the ever-present matriarchal forces that be—my mom and theirs—calling the shots with sprinkles of Catholic guilt, strong side-eyes and sharp smiles.

Matt, Luke, & Matt's kids

Katie & I