Requiem for Blanket

First photo session with Blanket. Max was two days old. I think he was crying about his silly outfit.

The morning we were to drop off Hannah at overnight camp, I tweeted something to the effect of, "If in the betting pool, you had prior to 6:30 am as the time I'd start crying today, you're the winner." Because not only was Hannah on her way out the door, but Max also had to prove he was growing up and leaving me too. Well, not exactly, but it's a pretty major step considering the last six years (the entirety) of his life.

Just before 6:30 am, when I asked if he was bringing Blanket when he went to visit my in-laws, he not only said no, but he said we could throw Blanket away.

BLANKET.

Just a few days earlier, Blanket essentially lost his shine. The very best part of Blanket, his tag, had fallen off.

(And yes, Blanket is a "he" who has been anthropomorphized in excruciating detail over the years. Blanket has lived quite a life.)

So when the tag, or "deedee" as Max has called it since the age of two, finally succumbed to years of being rubbed between Max's thumb and fingers and fell off, well, that was it. The end of the affair.

I can't throw him away, so I washed him one last time (he was the nap bag blanket!), and tucked him away in a closet. In all honesty, I loved that Blanket almost as much as Max did, because my son loved him. If he'd gotten lost along the way, I would have moved heaven and earth to find him again.

Max hasn't looked back since that morning. In my mind, I imagine Blanket is a bit sad, missing Max. In some of Blanket's many adventures, he worked in a big office tower, "doing numbers" but always coming home at the end of the day. Blanket sometimes sounded a bit like me.

Thank you, Blanket, for everything.