8/3: Blankets

On a chair in my living room, atop a pillow, a parasaurolophus (par-uh-sor-OL-o-fus) lay beneath a tissue. He looks comfortable there, his six-inch plastic body snuggled softly.

Though I am used to seeing these things—four years of dolls draped with dish towels, stuffed animals tucked into tables with crocheted blankets, plastic dinosaurs paper-toweled gently to sleep—it still has me in its charming spell.

But I always wonder: Did the weedy sea dragon wrapped in a shred of paper towel have a bad day, a cough? Maybe the plastic army men were sleepy from holding their poses for so many years. And if the stuffed polar bear were really cold, would an entire box of tissues warm him?

How does my daughter, now six and a half, choose which creature to cuddle? What determines the time they retire? What are they telling her that I am too old to hear?

For a fleeting moment, I worry that this is some manifestation of a mother’s lack of attention, that "covering things with blankets" is some textbook childhood disorder. (Seeing faces in the abstract patterns of trees, upholstery, and water, for example, is a sign of mental illness.) If a psychiatrist came to my house tomorrow, he would probably think nothing of Baby Tender Love in her cradle, a pink blanket pulled up to her chin. But what might he say about the rubber frog wrapped in underpants? What would he think of the parasaurolophus?

In dreams, blankets carry different meanings. Clean ones mean success and good health; dirty ones mean treachery. Covering something with a blanket in a dream means you are covering up something or covering for someone. In waking life, the blanket is a symbol of safety and security. Charles Schultz gave Linus a blanket, and good insurance companies give us blanket protection.

I could drive myself nuts wondering if she is feeling unsafe or simply wants to make everyone feel as safe as she. And though it might be akin to learning how your favorite magic trick is done, I suppose I could come right out and ask my daughter why she has covered this toy or that, why she has swaddled one in a sock, settled another down in her shoe.

When my daughter comes downstairs in the morning, I ask her why the cretaceous-period creature has been put so gently to bed on an overstuffed pillow on the living room chair.

"Well, the parasaurolophus has a broken leg. He was getting eaten up by three weedy sea dragons because they thought he was lunch. The blanket makes him not cold, since this house is freezing cold right now."

I am not sorry I asked. It is still charming. She is still magic.