I am twenty-three years old and I sleep with my baby blanket. It's an odd admission when I am not curled up in my bed with the blanket itself nearby. It's not something I would admit to when I am teaching or when I am out with friends pounding shots at a bar. It isn't an admission that fits into the adult world. Adults don't sleep with their baby blankets. Baby blankets are things we leave behind when we hit puberty and the attractions of the same (or opposite, if you must) sex lure us out of our heads and into the "real" world. It's not normal. It might not be sane. But I sleep, unabashedly, with my baby blanket.
My baby blanket is worn and tattered. It has holes in it and the silk edges are frayed and, in some places, falling off. My baby blanket didn't always look like this. When I was home for semester break I did some cleaning and I discovered a picture of me on the family vacation to Disney World--I was somewhere around five years old. In the picture I am sleeping on the bed, half the blanket spread out under me while the other half wrapped around me like the bun of a hot dog. I was shorter then; the blanket was longer than I was and its pale yellow color, much purer then than it is now, is offset by my hard-won Florida tan. That picture gave me pause. It isn't that I have always slept with my baby blanket so peacefully and tranquilly as I did then. My recent baby blanket dreams are a product of my recent past.
During the summer between my sixth and seventh years in school, I had a biking accident. It was stupid. The neighborhood kids and I used to dare each other to ride down a hill with our eyes closed. At the bottom of the hill is a bridge of sorts--the road crosses a viaduct and is hemmed in with rough-hewn two by sixes that once were emblazoned with reflecting plastic but now show their age with the rusted-out brackets for these mythical, long-gone notifiers of traffic. The dare was to not open your eyes until you sensed that you were on the bridge--the high, wooden walls of the bridge changed the sounds that bounced back to your ears. I was never brave enough to do it in front of my friends, so one day, while biking alone, I decided to prove to myself once and for all that I could do it.
I wrecked.
Crashed head on into the side of the bridge leaving imprints and scars of the two by sixes and the vacant reflector brackets. I was unconscious for a while, woke up in the emergency room for a minute, and then went back under until I had been moved into a room in the pediatric wing of the hospital. I recovered quickly, as children tend to do (what with the cells replicating so fast and all) and was back on my feet in no time. Until the first day of the seventh grade when my balls hurt so badly that I had to go to the office during first hour orchestra practice.
At the doctor I was told I had a potential hernia--likely the result of my biking accident--and that I would need surgery. Subsequent visits to specialists confirmed that I would, indeed, need to go under the knife. At the last check-in before surgery the doctor told me I could bring a stuffed animal with me into surgery to comfort me as I went under the anesthetic. I felt a bit foolish being offered such a surgery companion. After all, I was becoming a man. I was rapidly growing upwards and outwards. I had at least three combined hairs underneath my two arms. You don't offer "men" with at least three combined hairs underneath their two arms the chance to take a stuffed animal into surgery. Secretly, though, I was grateful. I was petrified at the thought of going in there alone. I didn't have a favorite stuffed animal, but, as I recalled, I did have a baby blanket stuffed away somewhere.
Somewhere along the line my parents realized that the heavy blankets and pillows that helped to lull me into sleep before surgery would be stripped off--along with my baby blanket--during the operation. Sending a baby blanket in could be risky. It might not come back to me. And so my mom went down into her sewing room and embroidered my name--Marc Malone--into the silk hem in a light, mint green. After surgery, the blanket came back to me safe and sound.
That is the story of how my baby blanket became emblazoned with my sure-to-be-famous-one-day name. It is not, however, the story of how my blanket came to rest in the bed of its now twenty-three owner. That came much later, after my mom had died of cancer. Her death came at a rather unfortunate time. I had long undertaken the balancing act of leading a double life. In public, I was straight. In private, on the internet, in chat rooms, I was gay. I was okay with that balancing act until she died. Something about her passing toppled the framework of my delicate lie. I wasn't comfortable in my skin. I hated me. I didn't know how to be both things--straight and gay--at once. Something needed to go.
That process was long and difficult. Probably because my mom's death was its impetus, I tried too hard to hold on to my past and fight off the future. I became depressed and friends talked me away from window ledges and laid down underneath my car so I couldn't escape with an armful of pills and a bottle of water. It was rough, but on the other side of it all I found a different way of being--a way of being strong and confident. While this stage of my life seems to (in terms of my body) weigh a bit more than the double-life-living me, I am better off here.
Somewhere along the line, however, in between therapy sessions and finding myself in literature, I recovered my baby blanket. Perhaps it was the first night I cried myself to sleep after I was ousted from my double-life. Or maybe it was just the first night I drank too much alcohol and needed something comforting to put me to sleep in a spinning bed. Regardless, I found what I needed. I found the appropriate amount of comfort in the past while staying firmly grounded in the present. My baby blanket is more than just a threadbare, shredded piece of fabric. It is, rather, the collection of all my life experiences. It is my trip to Florida as a five year old. It is my double-life. It is my mother's embroidery. It is my mother's death. It is my nearly-experienced trip off the seventeenth floor. It is my trip to Paris. It is coming out of the closet. It is moving to Iowa. It is pursuing a dream. My baby blanket is everything I was from birth to a second ago and it is what propels me towards the life that I want to lead, whatever that is.
