Here’s an update to my earlier post about losing my daughter’s Special Blanket: We found SB!
Actually my husband found SB. I was sitting in the living room when he shouted (he does not shout!) from the back room: “I FOUND IT!”
“You found what?” I asked.
He thundered into the living room, all six-foot-four of him, holding aloft a bit of shabby pink fabric. “Special Blanket! I found Special Blanket!”
Penny, who was in my lap, went rigid, then threw her hands in the air. She and Randy had the same electrified expression on their faces: unbridled joy. He handed her SB. She hugged him to her chest and grinned madly at her dad.
“Where was he?” I asked, eyeing the prodigal lovey with suspicion. Had he deserted us? What adventures had he experienced? Was he clean?
“I’m going to tell you, but you can’t write about it,” he said.
Reader, I’m breaking my promise to my husband. Special Blanket was tucked into Randy’s pillowcase, where he had been deposited by Penny’s friend Amelie during a playdate. Amelie is a little tucker: she tucks dolls into small boxes, tucks those boxes into nooks and crannies. She tucked her dad’s Kindle under the TV and it wasn’t found for days. She tucks herself into corners so that you go looking for her in a tiny apartment and you’re ready to call the cops before she pops out to surprise you. She tucked SB into the pillowcase along with a couple of small bears, who were living there. I remember finding the bears. I just didn’t notice SB.
“Please, please tell them SB was folded up with the linens,” he begged me. “I don’t want people to know how not-often we change the sheets.”
So as far as you’re concerned, SB was, in fact, folded up inside some linens. They just happen to be linens that stayed on our bed for a couple of weeks.
Anyway, we have SB back. And I wondered, will it be the same? Penny had told me she didn’t miss him. But seeing them together now, it’s clearly a relief. Can she go to sleep without him? Yes. Would she prefer to have him? Yes. Were we both grateful to be able to say “Fuzzy or pink side?” “Pink,” the old call-and-response, that evening? Yes. It felt like prayer, like a mini Shema.
Now he is back among us, the fuzzy pink fella (I guess he’s a dude after all). I’m grateful, if only because I hadn’t realized how precious he is to me as well as to Penelope.
