Well, Mom bought me my first Vellux ("fuzz-less", as Brenda would correct me) blanket. You see, I've always been rather girly when it came to textures touching my skin. As an infant, I am told that my favorite part of the blanket was the satin tape that edged the seams because I liked how it felt against my cheek. Vellux blankets are nothing extravagant, but they feel like velvet and comfort like hot cocoa. I hadn't had my my blanket very long before my cat commandeered the folded bit at the end of my bed and claimed it as having always been hers.

Since realizing that my feline and I shared a certain longing for soft plushiness, I've noticed other such creatures, creatures who live with my aunts and answer to (when it pleases her) "Bandit", stray ever toward the "fuzz-less" blankets, and have flocked the Merlot-hued throws there with downy gray fleece. A picture of the fur baby in question:



Now, I face the prospect of a 3-hour car trip with a crying kitten, and, not yet knowing our new charge, wonder how to give comfort to a baby who is frightened and in the company of strangers. Eagerly, I tore through an assortment of boxes I'd recently re-organized, bits and pieces from my life in North Carolina. It doesn't bother me as much to go through them anymore. It did for a very long time—not that I'm not happier with the way my life is now than the way it was then, but it quite puts one in their place when they're shown exactly how little sway they hold in their own story.

Easily, I found a box of blankets—always one to cuddle under a throw—and breathed in the dank scent of disuse. Odd, isn't it? That the things I've tucked away from my mother still carry her perfume, and I hold the articles close to me, as if to inhale her presence to the room...yet, blankets I washed just before packing them away have lost all trace of that other life.

I petted at the folded seams, standing in my nighttime tank and bare feet on the cold basement floor, and walked languidly to the washer, writing yet another chapter in this prop's life, a small smile about my lips. Perfect.