I am truly blessed to have two very different families stemming from my parents. My mother had 8 sisters and brothers growing up on a farm in rural Vermont. As such, I have plethora of cousins, aunts, great aunts, adopted aunts, etc. and our family get-togethers are loud and cramped in my grandmothers small house, always surrounded by great company and even better food. On my father's side, I'm the only granddaughter in a Sicilian family. This has afforded me a very different, and equally fantastic, experience. This story is about my father’s mother (my Grandma) and a blanket.
I am the apple of my Grandma’s eye. I know it. I truly believe she likes me more than my own mother does. At Grandma’s house I am blanketed in warm love and acceptance. Even after all these years, I can do no wrong.
My Grandpa and Grandma have vacationed in Maine since my father was a toddler, and when I was young we would drive up for a week to visit in the summer. My parents would spend the whole time on the beach, but occasionally the weather would be bad, or Grandma would get sick of sitting around all day, and want to do something in town. Knowing I was also fidgety, she would take me along. As an adult looking back, I sometimes wonder if this was just an excuse to get some alone time with me. I always loved outings with Grandma.
One day we stumbled on a church auction. They had a variety of items up for bid and one in particular stole my heart. It was a black and white knitted throw blanket with Looney Tunes characters on it. Based on the blanket’s description, I can estimate that this event occurred around 1990-1992, at the height of the Looney Tunes craze (it seemed like they were everywhere!) and my love of the Babysitter’s Club books (because black and white were my favorite colors). To me, the blanket was perfect in every way. My Grandma picked up on this, and wanted me to have it. Because I was young, I have no recollection of how much she had to bid to win the blanket; money is so abstract when your little it hardly seems to register at all. But I believe should would have run over the pope to get it for me if necessary. What I do remember however, is her expression when she went up to the stage to receive it. She was awash with pride.
I have gotten rid of so much, so many objects that represent memories, over the years. More than once in my life I’ve had to pack everything I own into my car.
There are objects to this day that I pine over losing; difficult choices made in response to lack of space. But I will never get rid of the blanket. It has become the consummate symbol of my grandmother’s all in-compassing love. I need it. It is frayed, and dirty, and out-moded, and perfect. Someday I hope to give my own granddaughter the perfect blanket.
A description of my blanket: It's rectangular with tassles on the shorter ends. It black and white and double-sided. One side is the "positive" with a black background and white characters, and the other is the "negative" with a white background and black characters. In other words, the design is the same on both sides, but the colors are exactly inverted. The text in the design is "What's up, doc?" at random locations and angles. The characters on the blanket are Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Sylvester, The Tasmanian Devil, Daffy Duck and Pepe Le Pew. The characters are also randomly spaced on the blanket, at different angles, and they aren't depicting a scene of any kind.