A Sad Blanket Story (or two)

My mom used to have an Indian blanket. (Maybe I will put this story in the book. I almost remember how it really happened.) It was green with multicolored Indian patterns woven into it. I think she got it with green stamps. She had it as long as I can remember. She was especially fond of it. My brother used it to build a teepee in the woods. Because after all, an Indian blanket would make a good teepee. Seems like we may have played in the teepee, along with the neighbor kids, for several days. Until someone else (because I'm pretty sure no one ever took credit for this idea) decided that what every good teepee needed was a fire. In the middle of it. The Indian blanket was evidently not intended for such a use. After a small neighborly bucket brigade, all that remained were a few smoke signals, a charred troll doll, and the scattered damp ashes of what was once my mom's Indian blanket. Fortunately, the woods also remained. (I will write more about the troll doll in the book about my siblings--the working title is "I'm Telling Mom".) The loss of the Indian blanket may continue to be a sadness to my mom.
That said, here is the sad blanket story:
When I went away to college, my mom made me a blanket for my dorm bed. It was a patchwork blanket made out of polyester double knit. Little squares cut from remnants of that indestructible synthetic fabric that all of our clothes were made out of in the seventies. The blanket was like a family fashion history in 4 inch squares. I had a dress for sixth grade graduation out of this material. And we had matching sister short outfits out of this one. Nancy had a pantsuit (!) out of this. I used the blanket 3 years at PSU, one year in Pgh, and then in it's second life it was repurposed as the blanket that traveled in the car. In case we ever broke down. In the cold. It became known as 'The Picnic Blanket'. It served as a tablecloth at countless picnics. On the sidelines of multitudes of soccer fields. I used it as a diaper changing pad and to put under my plants when I brought them home from the greenhouse. It got soaking wet when the tide came in at the beach. It went to New England for my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and the STP and I wrapped up in it together to watch the sunset on Cape Cod. This spring it went to track meets. After more than 30 years it still looked pretty much the same as when my mom made it. Except that a few of the squares were cotton knit, and after countless washings, those squares had just disintegrated. When we were home on vacation, my mom mentioned that a box of double knit quilt squares had surfaced at her neighbors house. Such a serendipity. I brought a few back with me with the intention of replacing the worn ones in my picnic blanket. I figured it was good for another 30 years. Except that when I went to get it from the back of the Subaru, it wasn't there. And it wasn't in the STP's car. And it wasn't in the laundry. And it wasn't in the closet and it wasn't in the Booger's track stuff. Near as I can figure, it never made it home from the last track meet of the season. (The one where his dad picked him up and failed to ask, "Do you have your mother's blanket? Not that I'm blaming him.) It makes me too sad to say that it is gone, but, short of it miraculously turning up at a thrift shop, I'm afraid that is the case.
So now I understand Grace just a little better.
Even though there is a great sadness about the loss of the blanket, I remind myself that it could be worse. After all, as the princess says, we are not on fire.
The End.

The moral of the stories may well be this old Indian saying: Don't trust your blanket to your eldest son.