The Secret Switch

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Son #6 has a new baby who is not happy about his current living arrangements. The baby sees no reason to use his bed when he has perfectly healthy parents who can bounce and pat him regardless of the hour of the day. Good thing he’s adorable. Now if he had Son #4’s baby personality, he’d just jam his thumb in his mouth, hold the corner of a fuzzy blanket up to his cheek, and go directly to sleep. (Son #6 has slyly suggested his older brother might still use that method of self-soothing! I don’t know; I’m not privy to that information.)

Most of us are prone to suffering bouts of discomfort. I’m not talking about the severe paralyzing kind which can cripple everyday life, but the low-grade, irritating anxiety or frustration which short-circuits our best laid plans. It’s a fortunate person who identifies strategies for coping with those moments early in life. Son #1’s first daughter was the perfect example. She has proven to be astonishingly an competent adult, but as a child, she was easily upset if she didn’t have control over her situation. She solved that problem with a blankie.

When she was an infant, some kind soul had given her a sweet receiving blanket which her parents wrapped around her every night. She grew to love it, and eventually could not sleep without it. Whoa be the parent who forgot to pack the blankie in the diaper bag on family trips, or the older brother who delighted in goading her into hysteria with tug-of-wars of malicious intent. By the time she was three, the blankie had become a mother’s hygiene nightmare. It bore the stains of hundreds of meals, scrapes from playgrounds or toy boxes, and smudges which were best not examined too closely. When her mother occasionally insisted it had to be washed, the little girl sat in front of the machine watching it go round and round until her blankie was safe in her hands again.

Finally, the day came when the blankie was so tattered and worn that it was no longer a viable covering. Her parents stewed about how to ease their soon to be five-year-old away from her dependence on it. Kindergarten was looming in the future–something had to be done. No reasonable argument had any effect. The child resorted to violence when they talked to her about the fact that the blankie was falling apart and needed to be thrown away. She kicked and yelled until they relented and gave her blankie back to her. (I was seriously sympathetic to their plight. I’d been there myself with the little girl’s stubborn father years before.)

Then Son #1 had an idea. He convinced his daughter that he was taking the blankie to a “blankie repair shop”—a place which specialized in blanket renewal. He assured her he would take the blankie with him early in the morning before work, drop it at the shop, and return with it all repaired by the end of the day. Finally, she agreed to let it go. He loaded it into a brown paper bag the next morning and carried it to the car while she watched from the window, pacing anxiously. At least twice, she demanded her mother call her dad at his office to assure herself the blanket’s return was on schedule. Her mother says the little girl made trip after trip to the front door to check and see if the car had pulled into the driveway yet.

Exactly as promised, eight or so hours later, her dad came through the door carrying a package wrapped in a brown paper bag. She hugged it to her chest and then opened it carefully, studying the “new” blankie intently. ‘Daddy, it’s all clean.,” she said, delighted. Then she cuddled it up against her cheek! Her eyes widened as the bottom corner brushed her feet. “And it’s BIGGER!”

“Opps,” Son #1 gulped, exchanging a glance with her mother.

His wife laughed. She knew the truth. He had dumped their little girl’s blankie in the trash on his way out the door that morning, driven straight to the nearest big box store, and purchased a brand-new version of his daughter’s old, beloved companion. “I guess it grew,” he said as he reached down and hugged the child. “That’s because it’s magic.”

His little girl nodded in placid recognition of the truth.

Now she is grown, married, and soon to have a child of her own. I don’t know if Son #1 ever told her about the “blankie” switch. But her dad was right. Magic did happen that morning–as it often does when love is the fabric which binds parents and children together.