Blanket

When I was a little girl, my mom would wash my favorite blanket and I would cry.

She’d proudly hand me the clotheslined dried garment and say, “Doesn’t that smell better?”

I was a sensitive child.

I’d press my nose to the warm fabric, inhale, and then my eyes would well with tears.

I fought the feeling like one does the flu.

But everything I loved about my beloved blanket was gone.

All day long, I’d bury my nose in the soft cotton quilting, and what smelled horrible to another, smelled like home to me.

At five years old, it was my place of peace.

One spot smelled of the dandelions I’d rubbed on my cheek in the morning sun.

A few inches over, I’d breathe in the rich black soil from Dad tilling the garden.

Not so far away, the fabric radiated of dry hay from the barn right next to the air of fresh clover from the rolling pasture.

No matter those, I’ll never forget the scent, that smell I couldn’t name, the one that pulled me in and kept me coming back for more, like the draw of fresh rain on concrete or inhaling wet pine soaked in morning dew, the musk of a creek cutting through the wood in spring.

The fragrances all melded into one to make something unnamed, something unclaimed…

Only to be sensed by a little girl who loved her mom and her beloved blanket.