I still feel like carrying around a security blanket.

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For those who remember ...


During my "the kids are gone, let's clean the whole house and get rid of stuff" week, I stumbled upon the last few scraps of Bean's beloved Purple Baby. Neither purple, nor baby, Purple Baby was a flannel blanket that she glommed onto as her security blanket. She had been okay with pretty much any flannel receiving blanket, but at some point, it was down to two identical ones that she named Purple Baby.

As would be expected, PB broke down over time, with small tears and pulls. At some point she lost one, and then the one remaining split into two. That became three, and so on. In the end, PB was just a few strips of blanket. But she loved it just the same.

She's since moved on to just needing something to hold. She has a veritable preserve's worth of stuffed animals, so she just picks the one (or ten) she likes that day.

But I keep the few remaining scraps of PB for her memory book or whatever. If she's anything like me, they'll get thrown out in some mad purge, but I wanted her to have them when she's all grown up. A part of me misses the little girl who determinedly stuck with PB even when it was just a tiny scrap of blanket. And when I see these little PB fragments, I can't help picturing her as the little girl she was.



I think Max secretly misses it too.

(Quote from "The Freshman")

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