Goodbye to an Old Friend

When the boy was still an infant, one of the Wife’s friends crocheted a blanket for him. It’s a small blanket, though at the time it was big enough for him to be covered up by it. But it wasn’t quite big enough to swaddle him in.

It became his favorite blanket, despite a number of other potential candidates including a couple his Grandmother had made (those were big enough to swaddle him in). Blankets with Sesame Street characters and Super Heroes on them all fell be the wayside to this simple, light green blanket.

Now, this wasn’t a “Linus” blanket. He didn’t carry it with him everywhere he went. Though when he was younger, if he was found napping, “Green”, as he came to call it, was often clutched in one of his hands. He would bring it along for long trips and, as he got a older, it was his goto companion when he went to sleep.

When the boy turned 5, I argued with the Wife that we should remove the blanket from him. It was, in my view, the equivalent of a pacifier and I felt he was getting too old to be dependent on something like that. She countered that he really only slept with it, that it basically stayed on his bed and we should let him out grow it on his own. I grumbled something to the effect of how long would we wait for him to give it up? Until he’s 10? or 13? It wasn’t going to be easy either way. I lost that argument and the boy kept his blanket with him. I kept my feelings to myself for the most part. The Wife knew, but I never mentioned anything to the boy.

Then, this week, he decided to put it in a drawer in his dresser. When I put him to bed last night, he asked me “Do you see anything that’s missing, Dad? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with ‘G’.” He then showed me how he’d neatly folded it up and placed it in a drawer in the dresser I’d made him. It was a drawer that he used for other keepsakes as well.

Curious, I asked him what had prompted the change. The boy shrugged his shoulders and said he “didn’t want to be a baby anymore.” He further elaborated that it was a little embarrassing when he had friends over and the blanket was still there. He figured he was old enough that it was time to put it away.

Despite my own feelings about the blanket, which admittedly had only intensified as he’s gotten older, I winced a bit internally when he mentioned how the blanket embarrassed him. It was a long fall from grace for something that had held such high status for so long. But sometimes, that’s the way of it.

He gave the blanket a final look before closing the drawer. Then, he climbed into bed. I noticed that his hand made a strange motion, as if clutching for something it expected to be there. The boy looked at me and grinned sheepishly, his expression asking me a question that most kids ask their parents at one point or another: Did I do the right thing?

I said “Goodnight” to him, then gave him a hug and kiss. My final thought before I turned out the light was “It’s just a blanket.”