My daughter’s baba blanky disintegrated this week. I don’t mean got lost or went away to blanky heaven or any of the other excuses we use to describe when our children’s items need to go. I mean it disintegrated. This is something I have been waiting for, watching and monitoring you might say for about the last year and a half.
My daughter’s baba blanky actually started as a blanket that was made for my son by my grandmother. It was powder blue on one side and had little teddy bears on the other on a white back ground. Each bear had a little saying underneath it. I am sitting here racking my brain as to what they were and even though I have read them about a hundred times to my daughter, I can’t remember them to save my life. Isn’t that just the way it goes? The inside of the blanky had a once thick piece of batting, but by the time this story is over let’s just say it got thin. Really thin. Like transparent thin.
The blanket came into my daughter’s life when it once began as a thick and very soft blanket that I would wrap around her in her baby carrier. It was the perfect size. It didn’t fall over the edges and drag and yet it wouldn’t let her tiny feet peek out the end either. It really was wonderful. As time went on, my daughter just claimed it as her own. My son didn’t care, he was never attached to blankets and I don’t think he really even noticed. So, the blanket became her property. That’s when the name Baba came into being. Blanket wasn’t quite in her vocabulary and so Baba it became. As her verbal skills enhanced, so the full name, Baba Blankey was given. She would carry it around the house, lay with it on the couch and eventually wrapped it around her pillow to lay her head on at night.
My daughter loved this blanket. She loved it like a child loves a family pet or their first pacifier or how an adult loves their first car or the first thing they can call their own. She would hug it and sometimes even kiss it as she caressed the fabric across her cheek and whisper it sweet nothings. Her water blue eyes would sparkle when she held it or spoke of it or even sometimes just touched it. The blanket had gone through the normal stages of a young girl’s growing up. Fevers, the flu, vomit in the car, scary doctor and dentist appointments, traveling to Lake Tahoe or Florida or Alaska or Spokane just to see the grandparents. It went through a divorce and the horrors children’s emotions go though along the way in that life experience. Many a time was spent driving it back and forth if it was forgotten as the tears and lost sleep were not worth the savings of gas. It was an extension of her, or so it seemed, and its nearness was of great importance to the happiness of my girl.
About a year and a half ago she was sitting with me and I noticed the hem loosening along the edges. I asked my daughter if she would like me to mend Baba. She agreed it needed some tending to. I carefully restitched the edges and took a long look at the fabric itself. It wasn’t as thick as it used to be for sure, but it was holding up. A few months later, my daughter came to me and said Baba needed more repairs. I looked and yikes, it really needed some help. I restitched the edges and then started mending the thin areas where the blanket had split. Now, I am not the best seamstress, so I did what I could and this, for now, satisfied my daughter.
Soon stitching wouldn’t cut it. The holes were larger and you couldn’t cover all the batting inside. So we improvised and just did the best we could. Now at this point, I thought it would be in my best interest to start preparing my daughter for the demise of Baba. I said, “I notice your baba is looking pretty thin, you do know someday it will probably have to go, right?” Her eyes were so sad. She just looked like I didn’t realize that Baba was never going to go, but rather always going be there. Was I crazy? Perhaps. But better to plant the seed then have a big watermelon drop from the sky later. After time, I would wash Baba and pieces would end up in the dryer; I would quickly put them in the trash and cover them. My daughter would bring me the blanket and tell me it wasn’t time for it to go. It was still good and working. Last month I noticed there where only three or four pieces of the front of Baba left. She would find the biggest piece and make sure it was what she wrapped it around her pillow to lay her head on at night.
Finally, the Baba’s thinnest, most fragile threads unraveled. I was lying in my own bed trying to sleep and she came in. “Baba’s done mom. “ She was beside herself. Now, I should let you know for the sake of me not sounding like a hardass mom with no heart, I have been training my daughter to sleep in her own room. In her own bed. In the time since the separation of my marriage, she had gotten used to sleeping more often in my room than her own and truthfully, I think it suited us both in an emotional attachment, healthy or not. However, it was time to move on. So when she came in and told me what I really wanted to do was grab her and hold her and tell her I was sorry, then cuddle her next to me and let her cry and sleep. I couldn’t do that though. I had to grab her and hug her and hold her and tell her I was sorry, then send her back to her own room to sleep without Baba. No one really got any sleep that night. My daughter missed her comfort and I worried that she would never sleep again. In the morning, she showed me how she wrapped the last strings of material around her stuffed kitty and duck, so they could have some Baba time. My heart ached for her. I know what it is like to have an attachment to something that gives us comfort, makes us calm and content…and then it is gone. I had a garden of perennials like that and when I lost it, my heart broke. Just like my daughters.
