Slightly Off the Grid

My baby blanket was hands-down the thing I was most attached to as a child. I can still feel the smooth satin binding against my cheek and the soft nubbiness of the blanket itself. It was a buttery off-white and may have been fleecy when brand-new, but who remembers what their baby blanket was like brand-new? To this day, I fall sleep with an off-white fleecy blanket snuggled up against my cheek.

It smelled…like me. And I loved that. Is there anything more self-soothing than a blanket that smells pleasantly like self? My siblings each had their own blanket but their blankets smelled “off.” They didn’t smell like my blanket. They smelled like my siblings’ blankets. I suppose they smelled like my siblings, but I didn’t care to test that theory.

We used our blankets for all the usual blankety things: superhero capes, dolly tablecloths, ghost coverings, tear wipes, snot rags. Sometimes we used our blankets to play “Beach.” This activity was so dumb that I am probably the one who came up with it. Or… maybe it was Mom’s idea to get us quiet before bed. Basically, we spread our six blankets on the hallway floor and lay on them, pretending that we were at the beach. It’s actually a stretch to call this an activity since I think all we did was lie there on our blankets. We lived a block from the beach, so this was the equivalent of coming home from school and playing “School.” But dumber. In our defense, it was preceded by a rousing session of what I will now call “Stair surfing” where we slid down the carpeted steps in our footie pajamas. I can still feel the thumpety-thump of the edge of each step on my belly.

At some point prior to middle school, the blanket disappeared. I had been trying to give it up because it was baby-ish, and I may have succeeded in storing it in a dresser drawer. But I did not toss it. There is no doubt that Mom got rid of it, just as her sister tossed my cousin’s ratty teddy bear in the trash. Legend has it that he chased down the street after the trash truck. Unsuccessfully.

I grew up in an era when psychological needs did not exist. It should have made me more sensitive to the attachments my daughters had to their blankets. However, it didn’t. At some point, over her vehement protestations, I insisted that a certain daughter’s blanket go into the trash. Her blanket was shredded to the point that only the fraying satin binding held it together. I was convinced that it would strangle her in her sleep. Being a mother won out over being a former blanket-loving child. The blanket got tossed and I provided another thing for her to talk about with a therapist.

In a hazy rosy-hued cloud of hindsight, if I had been a kind, nurturing kind of mom, I would have saved a swatch of blanket for my daughter. But in the clear light of day, an old baby-blanket is the filthiest thing one can carry around. It ranks right up there with cell-phones.

If Mom had saved my baby blanket—or even a swatch of it—it would now be either a historical relic archived behind glass or a worthless item I myself tossed long ago in a move.

It’s okay. I have my off-white fleecy blanket to rub across my cheek and my own teddy bear to go with it. We’ve been married forty-three years, way longer than I ever snuggled my baby blanket.