Blankie.

'Story of Golden Locks' by Seymour Joseph Guy, ca. 1870

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When I was little the monsters under my bed kept me awake at night. Their scorched, bony arms would blindly grab for my bare feet under the blanket. The witches in the corner would stand and stare at me — statuesque, silent, their fixed cold gazes burning straight through the bedsheets, although I never dared to look twice. My eyes would clamp shut, fear crushing my voice. Even if I had found it, experience had taught me that crying for help was like screaming into an abyss.

The only thing that could ever save me was Blankie.

Blankie was a pearl-white, handknitted cardigan, snug enough to fit a large doll, and had once warmed my own tiny body. After I became too big to wear it, for some unbeknownst reason, it became my transitional object.

Or, in human terms, my Surrogate Mother.

The smell of Blankie made my body flood with a sense of comfort and safety that I hadn't felt before. Any time I felt scared, or sad, or lonely, I would reach for Blankie. I would nestle her into the folds of my cupid's bow, marking the fabric with my own scent, whilst gently rubbing the wool across the bridge of my nose in rhythm with the suction noise of my thumb. Over time that scent seemed to alchemize into something magical, although Blankie would have smelled repellent to anyone but me. It was our bond that made Blankie so special, and no other mother would do.

Including Real Mother.

I could tell that Real Mother didn't like Blankie, although she never came out and said it. One of the ways I knew was because Real Mother didn't like Blankie playing with us. She would always make Blankie stay at home if we had to go to the shops, or out for lunch, or to visit one of her friends for a cup of tea.

Real Mother didn't even like tea.

Nevertheless, Real Mother would always insist that Blankie had to stay at home. I could tell she didn't like being seen with us. Instead I would have to self-soothe with obedience and the silent performance of a Good Girl. Real Mother caught us together one day (we were only supposed to see each other at night time, when everyone else was asleep). She prised Blankie effortlessly out of my hands and held her in the air in disgust. I instintively reached for Blankie but Real Mother just lifted her arm higher, before threatening to put Blankie in the washing machine. She may as well have punched the air out of my lungs.

I begged her not to. I told her that Blankie wouldn't be the same. That she couldn't wash Blankie. It would be the end of Blankie. Please, don't wash Blankie! She dropped Blankie and turned on her heel, muttering something, and I held her close, furiously sucking my thumb, tears streaming down my face.

The following afternoon Real Mother asked me to fetch her some tea towels from the airing cupboard. I climbed the olive green carpet on all fours before reaching the sumit and opening the wooden cupboard door. My search for tea towels stood suspended in horror, as I stared at the piles of perfectly folded laundry in front of me, and Blankie — right in the middle, arms outstretched — laid out in wake on top of the bath towels.

I don't remember how many days I had left with Blankie after that — it could have been years later or that very night — but as Real Mother was tucking me into bed, I nervously asked for Blankie, who was missing from my top-secret hiding spot under my pillow. She just looked at me and kept tucking the sheets in tighter like a matron, before saying - "No." All I remember is lying there, staring at the peach coloured flower wallpaper, feeling so confused.

No...no...no?

It might have been the first time that I disobeyed Real Mother with an insistence of her logic as to how the rule came to be. But my valantry did me no good.

"You're too old for it now."

It?

Too old?

What does she mean?

Blankie is my best friend.

'Too old' for Blankie?

What is she saying?

What?

She's not saying what I think she's saying...

is she?

And then she simply walked out of the room and left me there, lying confused and alone, wondering what on earth had happened to Blankie.

I lay awake thinking of Blankie alone, frightened, locked in a cupboard somewhere and cried myself to sleep.

I was convinced Real Mother was holding Blankie hostage and I searched high and low for her, utterly willing to break ranks and defy orders. No Blankie left behind. But no matter where I looked, or for how many years, I never found Blankie.

The first time I dared to asked Real Mother outright was when I was about 20 years old. She said something about the loft and for an undefinable number of years, I lived in hope that Blankie was still alive somewhere. But whenever I brought it up she would dismiss me as if it were an inconvenient rag that she just threw away with the cracked eggs and fat dripping.

Years passed, but the ache for Blankie remained unchanged.

When I was a Real Mother myself, we were out to lunch with one of her friends, who asked me whether I'd had a 'special' teddy when I was little that I couldn't live without.

I told her yes, Blankie.

And that Mother had taken Blankie away and never given her back.

I dont know where the words came from. The nerve to defy Real Mother...in front of another person. But they rolled off of my tongue before I could stop them. I have no idea what Real Mother said in response. I just remember the swiftness of her rebuke and the immediacy with which the conversation came to a close.

Decades later I still pine for Blankie. For that smell. That feel of the soft wool against my face. I've tried to recreate Blankie dozens of times in my life but, as any Frankenstein will tell you, we can never truly ever get back what is lost.

If I close my eyes I can still remember that smell. I can remember how every muscle in my body relaxed. How everything suddenly felt ok. To feel like I belonged. To feel safe.

Sometimes now, when my heart feels like it's going to implode from the horrifying realisation that I will never get to feel him in my arms ever again, never smell the nook of his neck, rub the soft nape hairs against my face, and feel every fibre of my being relax as we became entwined in one another...

I think of Blankie...

discarded, in the rubbish.

I never realised until he died that grief makes you feel like a helpless child again, afraid of the monsters under the bed, crying out for a mother who will never come. Left only with the cold, empty space where love used to be.

And no one ever telling you why.