A good week

And did I mention that it's the last full week of summer vacation, too? School starts the middle of next week. I'm thinking ahead to the first full week of school (about 10 days from now) and the possibilities are endless. Oh, what I can accomplish in 6 hours! But I digress.

This was a banner week for little Henry, my youngest. In love with a tiny remnant of a scrap of a blanket which is in actuality a twist of threads and knots, he will soon be without the one great love of his short life -- his "blankie". There's something bittersweet about finding clumps and tatters of his once soft and beautiful blanket around the house these days, let me tell you. Henry's my baby, so this loss is just as much a rite of passage for me as for him. Just when this scrappy old thing is starting to really break down, Grandma Ginger (my mother) up and finishes the quilt she started for him when he was born. G.G lives 800 miles away so she sent it through the mail. Last spring when she talked to him on the phone she told Henry she was piecing it together. In June she told him that she had given it to a friend to embroider his name on it, then late last week she told us that it would be coming in the mail, insured, so we had to be home to sign for it, etc. And truly, you never saw a kid so happy with a new quilted blanket than Henry.

I'd have to read up on it, but our Montessori teacher always told us there were three stages to childhood, each 6 years long. So Henry is just finishing up the first third of his childhood. I think it's fitting that he should graduate to a new blanket. Indeed, that's what I'm going to tell my mother, who has felt that nagging personal guilt we all feel when we do so much for the first kid, then slack off for the ones who come later on. This was Mom's 6th "baby" quilt, and it remained merely a good intention until recently when she had some big epiphany about her mortality. I guess she thought she should wrap up some loose ends just in case. By the way, if you could see my beautiful, youthful mother you'd think it was ridiculous perhaps that she sensed decrepitude rapidly approaching but alas, none of us knows the day or the hour, isn't that what they say? In any case, that she would consider her quilt-less grandchild first as she saw her number coming up, truly says something about the kind of woman she is. So in a way, her timing was perfect. It's a milestone for a few of us, here: Henry receives a blanket just as he embarks on a new phase in life (did I mention he starts Kindergarten next week?); Grandma finally can close the door on a project which has been looming large for years; and I can retire what's left of that stringy wad of smelly fibers my son loves so much.

Maybe Henry will willingly help me put it away in his baby box. Now that he's a big guy, you know.