Now that my kids are not babies anymore I have some time to work on their baby scrapbooks. Just yesterday I gathered some remains of “blankie” in order to tape some threads into my younger son’s book. Yes, threads. That is almost all that is left of it. What can I say about “blankie”? How can I explain my own attachment to a baby’s “transition object”?
It all started when I was pregnant with my first child. At the baby shower the best gift I received was a baby blanket. We received lots of blankets, but this one was special. It was softer than air and bluer than the sky. Made of cashmere and silk, the label commanded: “dry clean only.” Yeah, right! I somehow sensed the amount of trips to the drycleaner would diminish. In spite of that daunting label, it quickly became my favorite. The waffly texture and just the right amount of stretch made it the ideal swaddling blanket. Apparently, my child needed to be swaddled in order to fall asleep. Without restraint he would smack himself in the face startling himself awake. I wrapped him up in that blanket so tightly that my father compared it to a straight jacket. I suggested that without the swaddling I might be the one in a straight jacket. He really did need it to sleep, but, as soon as he outgrew the swaddling, he outgrew the blanket. I wistfully packed it away, figuring if I did not have another child I would save it for when my sister had one. It was just too special to cram into one of the many bags of “hand me downs” or donations that perpetually gathered in our garage.
When my second son was born roughly two and a half years later, I retrieved the blanket from the box of treasures. It turned out he slept better when swaddled as well. Eventually, he also outgrew the swaddling but not the blanket. It turned out the mere sight of it would cause him to shudder in ecstasy and fall almost immediately to sleep. It came on every long trip and was his shortcut to slumberland. While my older son had enjoyed a lengthy bedtime ritual involving many stories, my younger son was set into his crib with his blanket and that was it. “Night-night.”
