The Near-Death Experience of Blankie
Mood:
don't ask
Topic: Audrey
In the end, Blankie went home with us, safe, sound, and really not much dirtier than before. But there are certain things that I will carry with me, as surely as a child carries a blanket: The creeping panic at the empty car seat, the oblivious arm-swinging of empty arms, the taste of bile in the back of my throat. Seats upturned to reveal only dead flies. The look on the waitress's face that sent waves of instant understanding. The smell of onions in the dumpster and on my hands. The drunk woman asking Audrey what was wrong. And the going home, steeped in relief and the knowledge that this was nearly It, but wasn't.
In early July, Jason and the blond kids and I went to a baseball game. We had general seating, which basically meant the bleachers that were open to the ground below. I remember this because it was the first time Audrey's beloved Blankie had been reduced to travel size. And that night I held it in my pocket for much of the evening. Handy, its new size, until it kept slipping through the bottom of the bleachers onto the gravel below. No girth to stop it. And when the girl three rows ahead of us offered to go retrieve it for Audrey, the look on her face was priceless as we gave the description: We were sending her to search for a shredded string. And thus, travel-size Blankie was dubbed Blankie String, and became known as an entity separate from Blankie itself.
It didn't take long before it was clear that Blankie String was a danger to itself. When we'd get ready to leave the house, Blankie, in a gray-pink puddle on the living room floor, would be in plain view and ready for the taking along. Blankie String, however, would be missing and in any of too many possible uknown small spaces to comprehend.
Naturally, it was Blankie String that was the more coveted. Because Blankie String is the part that gets shoved up Audrey's left nostril. Any mother of a blanket-carrying child can tell you that it is the habits that go with the banket that become as sacred as the object itself. Audrey's Blankie habits consist of sucking her right thumb while twilrling Blankie String up her left nostril. 
It must be said that Thumb Sucking and String Insertion and Blankie Holding all go together like a puzzle, a sum whose individual pieces by themselves mean absolutely nothing. So, really, it is a Blankie-Thumb-Nose combination with no uncombination available. Thus, when Blankie (String) goes missing, essentially so does Audrey's thumb and left nostril. You thought Ron Weasley's splinching hurt.
It didn't take long before we began tying Blankie String back on to the mother Blankie.
In April Audrey visited her dentist for a yearly exam. Of course on the office form there was a box labeled "sucks thumb." Of course I checked said box. Of course Dr. B brought it up with Audrey. Of course my nearly-six-year-old was given the Stern Look Of Disapproval. And the can of worms was opened: Audrey was told, on record, to stop sucking her thumb. For three months, I gave her the Stern Look Of Disapproval as I explained that, come her birthday in July, this would be It for Blankie-Thumb-Nose.
A week after the girl fetched Audrey's Blankie String from under the stadium bleachers, the birthday had arrived. It was this moment that Mom, Giver of Stern Looks met with the more compassionate, wiser Mom, Understander of Audrey. As I put her to bed that night, laying beside her under the covers, I told Audrey that it was up to her. The thumb-sucking, blankie-carrying would be waylaid when she was ready, on her terms. Because the Understander of Audrey understands there really is no other way. To push this child is to push a powder keg into fire. For success it has to be her idea. Her terms.
Audrey has not yet come to her terms. We have not yet taken her back to the dentist either.
Which brings us to August 12, a full month after her birthday, with Audrey dragging her Blankie along everywhere. Everywhere in this case includes a small Iowan town along the Mississippi River, home to our friends' cabin (remember the golf cart incident?) and also home to exactly one restaurant, Bucks & Bulls. Restaurant in this case means tavern. A tavern with dark wood panelling, multiple items of taxidermic interest, and the smell of thirty years' worth of grease and cigarette smoke. In other words, the scene of the crime.
Following a day of boating and tubing and swimming, we turned our exhausted, hungry bodies in the direction of Bucks & Bulls. In the van, Audrey was crying - something about her disobedient manner conflicting with her dad's exhausted, hungry demeanor - and I threw her Blankie back to her. Her thumb silenced her fit. Then we got out at the restaurant/tavern and ordered pizzas, pop, beer, and games of pool and Pac-Man and engaged in mindless visiting with our cabin-owning friends. No one remembered seeing Audrey carry Blankie with her.
The pizza plates were cleared and the bill was paid, and as we headed back to the cabin, some friends took Audrey with them to walk home. The remaining four of us clambered into the van and headed in the same direction.
As we were driving, I looked back at Audrey's empty car seat. The place where I expected to see Blankie, but didn't. We passed the group of walkers. Audrey's arms were swinging merrily, not yet aware of how empty they looked. A sick feeling crept over me, and my ashen face turned to Jason for the answer I didn't want to hear. "Where is Blankie?"
At the cabin, we searched. No Blankie. We looked in the boat: No Blankie. We looked in the yard, sidewalk, road, shed: No Blankie. And I suppressed that knowledge that I had tossed Blankie to a crying Audrey in the van on the way to the Bucks & Bulls. I didn't want to remember, because I knew where that remembering led. I knew, even then.
Jason drove to Bucks & Bulls and didn't find it. Thirteen-year-old Caitlin rode her bike to Bucks & Bulls and didn't find it. Audrey and I walked to Bucks & Bulls, and come hell or high water, we were going to find it.
Having seen two Blankie Hunters in the last ten minutes, the young men in the booth where Audrey had been knew what was coming. They picked up their feet, did the obligatory peer under the table. The bar waitress did the same obligatory turn-in-a-circle with eyes meaninglessly searching. And then, she asked the question I knew I didn't want to hear: What does Blankie look like? Because the answer was already taking me down a path I didn't want to go: "Ma'am, it looks like a dirty old rag." I swallowed hard, knowing what happens to dirty old rags. The look on the waitress's face returned the waves of understanding: Blankie had likely been taken for trash and thrown away.
She searched the trash and didn't find it. Her co-waiter searched the trash and didn't find it. I searched the trash (and the dumpster, full of black garbage bags and its smell of onions and full of the forgotten refuse of the last hour's guests), and come hell or high water, I was going to find it. But didn't. It was then that I turned to Audrey, lifted her on to a table with stained water-rings and cigarette ash, and informed her Blankie wasn't going to make it home with us. Probably ever again.
What her face did, and what my face did in response, sent waves of understanding through the crowd at the tavern. As though it had been rehearsed, a dozen drunken patrons, two bar tenders, and two stricken out-of-staters stood up and conducted a search party for Blankie. A woman with slurred speech crooned at Audrey, stroked her hair. Tales erupted of long-ago days of former children and their former beloved blankets. Booth cushions were overturned, floors examined in earnest, every corner inspected. But the futility was creeping in on us.
I had just heaved my sigh of resignation when the waiter appeared, fresh from a second dumpster search, holding up a grayed, frayed rag with the familiar zebra-elephant print. "You'll want to wash this before you let her use it," he said. I hadn't the heart or voice to tell him that was exactly as dirty as it was BEFORE it was lost. Audrey, giggling bubbles of relief, was more than happy to accept a Blankie washing in exchange for recovering it from the tavern dumpster.
The night had grown dark, and we were heading home. Five miles out of town, Audrey bolted upright and with dishplate eyes asked, "Is Blankie String still tied to it?" It was. Hallelujah, it was.
Posted by Amy
at 12:40 PM CDT
Updated: 14 August 2007 8:48 AM CDT
happy
a-ok
spacey
crushed out