After finally recovering from our battle with strep, and subsequently bleaching every surface in our house, I was ready for our family to get off the couch, and back to business, when I found myself sitting on said couch with #2 Saturday as she promptly proceeded to vomit all over me*.
Sigh.
So instead of spending Saturday night having dinner with friends, H and I spent it coaxing our daughter to drink small sips of water then, coaxing her to puke that water into the Tupperware container, so as not to further soil the couch that was now covered with the blanket pictured here.
Every family has a blanket like this. It's the family blanket. Usually an old bedspread. It's tattered and torn, and impossibly soft from years of family movie nights and being used to make pillow forts. It's the the only blanket that can make a fever go away or be used after an afternoon in the snow. It's usually kept in the family room closet and has been around so long, no one really remembers where it came from.
But I do.
While I wish I could say I sewed this quilt with my own hands for my hope chest, my name isn't Laura Ingalls Wilder, and our blanket was bought at Macy's for twenty-five dollars on Columbus Day, 1998. I was busy decorating the apartment H and I had moved into five months prior and thought I was really getting a steal. For the next three years it covered the tiny full-sized bed H and I had squeezed into our less-than-full-sized bedroom. When I got pregnant with #1 and we moved out of that apartment, purchasing a bed fit for two adults, instead of one college student, it was relegated to the linen closet and became our TV blanket.
Our blanket has not only spent evenings with us, early in our marriage, watching Party of Five reruns, but it also came to the hospital for #1's birth, a comforting reminder of home during those first bizarre, twilight nights on the maternity ward, when I was just beginning to realize what I had gotten myself into. And twice more, it came along to see me safely through to the other side of childbirth, covering me and my sleeping child as we got to know one another, before heading into the real world.
Our blanket has not always escaped unscathed. Bright purple ink stains cover its back from an early morning, purple-gel-pen-eating session that almost caused Reilly's ejection from the family, as what did not land on the blanket, covered the dog and the oatmeal-colored carpet. And of course, our blanket is now routinely covered in spilled juice, Goldfish crumbs and, as mentioned above, vomit.
When I look at this blanket, I see the story of myself as a wife and mother. The blanket started out so pristine and perfect, its only function to keep two people warm. As the years have passed, and the edges have frayed and the fabric become worn, each tear and stain tells a story of a growing family, just like every wrinkle and stretch mark on my person. It is an extension of my body when it covers my kids as they lay convalescing on the couch or just watching TV. And while the blanket's original job was to keep the two of us warm, what once barely covered a full-sized bed, seems to have expanded to warm and embrace a whole family.
*You are officially a parent when instead of running way screaming in disgust, you clutch a vomiting child to your body so they won't be scared while they puke.
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