Hello Haunted Quilt
My first lost quilt
Hello haunted quilt. In his book In the Shelter, the poet Padraig O'Tuama wrote a series of greetings to things in his life, some that he loved, some that came uninvited. I loved those hellos in that beautiful book.
He didn’t include an introduction to a haunted quilt so I will do that here.
Hello haunted quilt. Welcome. My haunted quilt was my first quilt. My baby blanket. I’m not the only one. I’ve talked to many people haunted by their own baby blanket, taken from them too soon. Their anger, still so hot.
All that remains of my baby blanket is one four-inch square cut and placed into my scrapbook.
I refer to this square as “the evidence.”
My parents told me that it was lost. I searched. Three years old. I climbed through the linen cabinet. I looked in spaces too small to hold it. I knew it couldn’t be hiding in that too small draw but I needed new places to look. Things don’t just disappear. I could not be lost. I looked for days.
It turned out, I was right. It was not lost.
The print was white kitten faces with pink noses sprayed across a green backgroun. A garden of kittens playing over a thin cotton print. A few years went by after my blanket went missing. One day I found a scrapbook labeled “a princess.” I opened it and looked inside.
I saw the evidence.
The realization hit me in a flash. It was not lost. There had been a conspiracy.
One of my favorite statements about Freud and why I come back to him over and over again is that he took the complaints of women seriously. Perhaps you are reading this and you think I must be a bitter old woman still holding on this to grievance. Perhaps you are also a bitter old woman like me. But Frued didn’t see it so. Oh, to be taken seriously! To take your own complaints seriously. It too me several years of therapy to admit how much I was still upset by this loss.
I’ve finally given up the ghost of this blanket. It no longer haunts me. It only gave up its grip on my heart when I admitted that it was unfair that it was taken. That the three year old girl deserved a say in what was too ugly and too old. That it had been mine. That it was my most precious thing, taken away. I had to agree with that little girl in order to let it go.
How horrible that we agree with those who steal our comforts away from us. The gentle weight of a favorite quilt is no small comfort.
Little kittens, time to go. I will remember you. Goodbye ghost.
This is for everyone who remembers your first piece of cloth. Your baby blanket.