Of Boo Boos and Blankies

Clockwise from top left, author with her Boo Boo, her son with his blankie, and her grandchild.

As the story goes, I was just 18 months old, and after multiple attempts to wrest my blankie from me without causing a tantrum of tears, Mom successfully weedled it from my grip during a nap. It had been months since she’d been able to wash it. The soft plissé cloth she had used to make the blankie was all but surgically attached to me. I remember how I’d run the satin edging through the fingers of my left hand while sucking on my right hand middle and ring fingers. I called the blankie Boo Boo. We were inseparable. 

Upon waking from the nap and finding no Boo Boo by my side, Mom said I started screaming. She calmed me enough to take me outside to show me that Boo Boo had not disappeared, but had been washed and was now drying on the line. She set me down in the grass and saw how I watched Boo Boo blowing in the wind. “My Boo Boo,” I wailed reaching my little arms upward to try and catch at the cloth. With another basket of laundry ready to hang, Mom let me cry and attempt to snatch at it as the wind seemed determined to blow it far away from my grasp. Mom said I was relentless in my pursuit of and plaint for the piece of fabric. She kept giving it a feel to see if it was dry. When she thought it was good enough, she unpinned it from the clothes line and handed it to me even though it was still slightly damp. I was finally soothed and content.

The incident, as Mom went on to tell the story, prompted her to make a second Boo Boo so that she could switch them out. The first time she did so, she said I was very suspicious but accepted the exchange without too much grumbling.

Although I stopped the finger sucking around the time I started school, both Boo Boos were tattered rags before I finally gave them up in third or fourth grade. Even then, for years after, I would run my left hand along the satin trim of my bed’s blanket.

When my son was born, Mom arrived for the birth with two blankies she had made. She used exactly the same material as she had for mine. He became very attached to the blankies, preferring the purple one. On wash days, however, he would take easy comfort with the pink one. 

My son’s blankie was not only a constant companion, but it served many purposes. When he wanted to be alone, he’d put it over his head so he couldn’t see anyone else. When he wanted to shield himself from seeing the big road* out the car window, he had us pull one edge of it through the top of the window before rolling it up the rest of the way so it served as a shade. One time he wrapped it around his head like a turban. Think Linus, from the Peanuts comic strip, and that was my son’s relationship to his blankies.

He, too, hung on to his blankies until they were in tatters. [I won’t out him as to how long that was.]

During my late thirties, I took on the Boo Boo Blankie making tradition as my go-to baby shower gift for younger friends. I have no idea whether any of my blankies became favorite lovies, but I like to think that maybe one or two achieved that status. 

The blankies I’m making now are for the grandchildren of close friends, as well as for my own. My first was born in August. I made her two...just in case.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2021

* http://authordjanderson.blogspot.com/2014/05/mama-is-college-on-big-road.html