Since she was a baby, our daughter has had a star-crossed love that was never meant to be. The object of her affection was actually intended for me. It is a loosely woven, decorative nursery blanket that my mom gave me when our eldest was born—something lightweight with which I could cover up while nursing a baby in the cool of a summer night.
Something about its fringed edges and smooth texture captivated her in her early months, and the blanket was mine no more. It was especially important to her when she was sleeping, so she always had it with her in her crib despite the fact that it truly was not intended to be functional in this way.
This was proven to me one day when I went to retrieve her after a nap and found her lying on her back with a long thread liberated from the blanket's warp and weft and wrapped around her neck. I took it immediately to my sewing machine and unleashed holy hell on it until none of its fibers were going anywhere. (I've had to do that at least twice since then.)
Suffice it to say that the girl loves this blankie. It is her most vital possession. That's why I was mildly concerned to find it missing two nights ago.
It wasn't missing, really. I knew we'd had it at church that afternoon; I knew I'd carried it to the fellowship hall to help the kids into their coats and boots; I just didn't know where it had gone from there. And I didn't notice its absence until tuck-in time, when I wound up filling in, an only partially satisfactory substitue for the lovey.
Yesterday afternoon, we went back to church for what I thought would be a straightforward retrieval mission. Not so. We checked the fellowship hall, the nursery, the preschool room, and then the office to no avail. I started to sweat.
The church secretary called the custodian on a walkie-talkie, and I walked down the hall to meet him in the nursery.
"Is it white?" he called from inside the room.
"Sort of," I said. "It's cream-colored–and–tan checkered." I felt hopeful...until I walked in and saw that what he had found was obviously not our blankie.
"I'm almost positive I had it in the fellowship hall, but I already checked there," I said. "The only other place it might be is in the parking lot."
The custodian's eyes widened slightly. "Was it like a towel?" he asked.
"Well, it doesn't look like much of a blanket anymore," I had to admit.
"I picked something up in the parking lot this morning and thought it was a towel. It had some snow on it, and I figured someone had dropped a rag or something," he said. Then he was silent. I instantly knew what this meant.
Just to confirm, I asked, "Did you throw it away?"
"Yes," he said.
"Is it inside?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"Is it in the Dumpster?"
"Yes," he said.
The next question was the hardest. "Did they pick up the trash today?" I asked.
"No," he said. "They come for it on Tuesdays."
"Then I'm going in," I told him.
He led me to the Dumpster in question, lifted the lid, and—much to my surprise and pleasure—grabbed a black trash bag himself. After a quick look inside, he reached for another, sifted through it, and pulled out...THE BLANKIE!!!
"THERE IT IS!" I said to the little girl I was holding and the world in general.
Thank God for small favors.
