The Blanket

I took the kids outside one night that summer. Spread out a blanket in the yard, a huge fuzzy one from the Buckley flea market. In the dark night. A blanket I had picked out after 7 years of not picking it out.

It was the kind of thing my mother would have bought.

Just a few years before, my mother and I had walked the stalls together and bought an entire theme of John Deere items for Kendall’s baby room. He would have a tractor theme of yellow and green, even if his father did drive an orange Kubota.

Some days now, I’ll stop and take the tractor sign out of a drawer (Kendall, having long outgrown them) and look for the price tag on the back. I will remember how my mother and I tried to decide if it was worth $10 or $12 and which one of us would have the nerve to ask for a few bucks off. (Neither, it turned out.)

For the last 7 years, I had walked the flea market without her. And every year, I picked up a John Deere item, started to say something to my mother, then put it back down again.

Finally, it was time. After 7 summers, I set out for the big blanket stall.

“We’re getting one this year,” I told the boys and Tim. Every year, I threatened to get one. Every year, I didn’t. The blankets seemed too big and bawdy - and too much without my mother.

We went by the blanket stall once, then twice.

Finally, Tim asked, “Well, are we?”

I stopped the third time by, and we entered the barrage of loud fleece blankets. I touched everything. Stars, moons, pandas, zebras. The kids ran through the maze of hanging rows, screeching and happy.

“Find a cat one,” was my only direction. My mother had given me a fleece cat blanket when I was 12. I remembered it last as a bed for the best kitty I ever had, Farlie. When Farlie died the summer we moved into our new house, the blanket disappeared too.

I turned down blue ones and orange ones and quiet ones. We found every cat one. Three of them. While everyone had a vote, mine was the only one that counted. I settled on a blanket with a dozen cats in every color. It was the closest to the one I had lost from my childhood. It was borderline hideous, but they all were. I wanted that blanket. It felt like my mother.

I paid the man my $45 in cash.

I made Tim carry the big, plastic block through the market. I enjoyed the bag maybe more than the blanket at that point. It was a riot, an obvious sign to all the others – yes, we had bought one of those blankets. But I couldn’t carry it. The blanket, finally bought, hadn’t felt like I thought it would. There was no satisfaction in the purchase. It wasn’t enough, it wouldn’t be, not without my mother.

At home, it got worse. I realized it was too big and too hot to use. It was a queen size and an inch thick. It was August, and I was under it on the couch, in a tee and shorts, sweating, determined to use it. It was nothing like that first blanket from my mother, and it never would be.

Finally, I gave up.

I folded it, 3,000 folds necessary to get it to a manageable size, and stuck it in the corner of the room behind the armchair. It was too big for a closet.

Until one day, when the boys were playing on the swingset out back.

I thought it would be a good afternoon for a picnic. So I dug out the huge cat blanket, scooping it up in both arms and spreading it out, one trip. The second trip, glasses of water for three. The third trip, a box of crackers and a block of cheese, a paring knife and a plate. On the next and final trip, my book and a pillow.

I spread out on the lawn, calling the boys in for snacks, sending them back out to swing, and reading my book, the fluffy fleece under my back fine in the shade of the tree. The cat, the new cat, appeared and curled up on it with me, purring.

It was a start.

Days passed like this. We got into the routine of spreading the blanket out on the grass in the afternoon, the grass so thick and green that year that it could push peaks into the deep fleece. It was a comfortable nest, a square summer getaway.

Then, in late August, when the nights were turning colder and the days shorter, I’d stepped outside on the back deck one evening - and noticed a million stars.

“Get out here!” I yelled. My husband turned off the TV. The kids came pronto. Their mother yelling at them to come out was usually a good thing.

We turned off the porch lights and walked into the darkness of the yard, spreading out the blanket and making a nest, this time with Tim. In the pitch black of the night.

We found there was plenty of room for all 4 of us. I turned up a corner and tucked my feet into the fleece. Nelson wanted between me and Tim, half scared, half thrilled with the night. Kendall braved the outside. His brother refused to let him be next to him.

The darkness was silent. We shared the sky with no one, 12 acres perfectly still and perfectly ours. We lay on our backs and stared at the sky. And the longer we looked, the more we saw.

We found stars and constellations and, later, stories and memories.

We stayed curled up, four on the blanket, late. Until the giggling started. Then, we didn’t look for stars, instead we looked for what we couldn’t see, what was in the woods.

The hysteria started and whenever the kids calmed down, Tim would hiss, “Did you hear that?” And we would all sit rock still, ears bursting with effort, our children clenching us. We laughed and laughed over that, the possibility of what was in the night, their wild imaginations

We stayed out past bedtime. Even as the grass grew wet around us. Even when it was late, so late. We stayed. Huddled tight on that fat, fleece blanket. An oasis. Together, our hearts pounding. Warm and close. A foursome, a family.

And, finally, the blanket felt like my mother.

❤️