So, I wrote this for a Creative Non-Fiction class. It’s about a symbolic object in my life, so I wrote about my baby blanket. Enjoy (:

It’s been twenty-one years since I arrived shiny, and wailing into this place we call life. Afraid and small, I gazed upon my young mother with new eyes. Shy and hopeful, my mother whispered I love you’s in my ear, knowing one day I wouldn’t be so tiny and infant-like. One day I’d inevitably have to move out, start a family, or have children. All these things she saw before her eyes as I begun to stop crying to wonder at the stillness flowing through me as the beautiful woman held me so close to her chest.

A blanket was given to me on the first day in my new home. Soft, warm, and colored with a faded rainbow pattern. As I fell asleep in my own room, in my own crib, in my own home, I squeezed the “bankey” against my chest, just as my mother had done with me in the hospital, and sighed as the anxious tears finally began to ebb.

There is hardly a memory of my childhood I can remember without my blanket. Every night before letting my eyes close, I’d press my blanket to my face, and smile into it, feeling lucky to have such a friend.

It’s been twenty-one years, and I still cling to the soft fabric of my “bankey.” As I look back, I wonder how I could have let time go by so fast. I notice the wrinkles around my mother’s eyes, the grey in her curly hair, and the faint lines around her mouth from making smiling her life-long career. It’s then I question the value of life. Through the years, my blanket has aged. The soft pastel colors have all blended into white. Even the orange stains from spilled food have faded. I often find soft orphan pieces of thread and string haphazardly settled on my bed, or clinging to my shirt as our enemy time takes its toll.

I know I will have to put it away one day, separate myself from its security, but for now, I’ll keep holding on to it. Tattered, ratty, smelly, and tear-soaked it may be. It may not look like much at all. But when I hold it, caress it against my cheek, breathe in the musty scent of my family house, I can picture life as a child, my mother’s smile, and the warm place I will always call home.