The Blue Blanket Conundrum

Well, the fancy canon digital camera my Dad gave me just announced it was a dead with a blood curdling buzz. Since I’m not about to buy another one in the near future, I guess that’s the end of the photography part of this blog for the time being.

This death is in keeping with my theme: impermanence. My afternoons are spent going through all the boxes of my accumulated stuff. First, I scanned all the photos, then I scanned all the correspondence I could, now I am taking apart and shredding all the medical charts I have accumulated.

That’s right, medical charts. For about 18 years I practiced homeopathy, and then quit for financial reasons. Medical charts can’t be destroyed for 7 years, so I’ve been holding on to them. I had hundreds of clients over the years, and the faces of most of them pop into my mind as I shred their charts. I think there are companies who do this for you, but being a cheapskate, I am doing it myself. It is unclear if the $85 shredder will survive the whole job. Sometimes it seems unclear if I will survive the whole job! These charts have clasps and staples, and these need to be undone by hand. I suppose I could throw away the file folder part, but I am too much of a tree-hugger to waste all that cardboard. So, I cut or pry the clasps off. The shredding part seems to generate a some kind of electrical field that does not make me feel well. Fortunately, I have moved beyond the moldy files now—I am no longer vaporizing mould into the atmosphere. But there is a charge to all that violent churning of the machine, and I am a sensitive little flower.

The boxes of non-paper stuff are a delight to dispense with after dealing with files. I just threw out yards of rainbow colored cloth from an ill-conceived curtain project in Greenfield, MA. I just found my faded corsage from my wedding there—I am happily friends with my ex, but don’t need to keep dead flowers to remember her. Yellow vinyl men’s rain pants. A worn out ill-fitting Tibetan skirt. A dirty down coat with a broken zipper and duct tape patches. These items post no obstacle to disposal.

Tonight, though, I face two of my own baby blankets. The pink one that I never favored, and MY BLUE BLANKET. I was as inseparable from my blue blanket as Linus was from his. The blanket use persisted, and did the pacifier, long beyond the appropriate age of obsolescence. In fact, the fact that I still have it bespeaks of it’s symbolism.

The qualities of my blue blanket that made it so lovable were three-fold. First, I think in the back of my mind I knew my Mom knitted it during while she was pregnant with me. Second, it is a nice soothing color, a light greenish blue. Third, the yarn is fabulously soft, perhaps cashmere. But the most satisfying thing about this blanket was it’s smell.

Now, the little faded blanket smells mostly like basement. But, if I bury my face in it like I once did, I do believe I can perceive a faint hint of its old aroma. I think the old smell must have been the smell of the wool itself. Family systems being what they are, I could always seek solace from my blue blanket, plunging face into it’s comforting folds and being transported to some other place of warmth, softness, soothingness: unconditional love.

I would like to thank the goat who’s wool became my alternate universe.

But, what to do with the blanket?