My Soft

Her name was Great Grandma Edith and although I lived in Kansas and my family was far away, she thought enough of my birth to make me My Soft. My Soft was a term I coined because the underside of this hand-sewn blanket was a flannel bottom. It was warm and soft against my skin and I loved it a lot.

The Kansas winters were often very cold and frigid. Climbing into a bed with cold sheets is nothing anyone (even at this age) wants to do, let alone being a little girl climbing into bed to be warm. So my dad would flip My Soft over to where the flannel part was up and making it not-so-cold against my skin. Again, it was an immediate comfort.

I wasn't the only one who possessed the infamous "Soft". My sister, Jenn, had one made for her as well by Great Grandma Edith, but hers had more blue to it. We were the Shindley Girls ... with our Softs.

At night before bed, we'd bring our Softs into the living room and lay them out. There were 4 of us, so each one would get on a corner. You notice the variety of different pattern blocks in the blanket. That made for a great hunt-and-find game, in fact it was The Soft Game. Dad would start it off by saying (Jenn you'll remember the pitch) "Caaaann yooooooou fiiiiinnnnnd ..........*long pause* ....... the one with the 2 red wheels and one brown wheel on it" and it would be a race as to who could find it first. Those were good times. Really good times.

My Soft was given back to me when my dad sold our childhood home to travel in their RV and work. It had been stored up in our attic along with other childhood memorabilia that I now possess like my dad's Vietnam photo album. In a way it was strange to get all these things back at such a young age. But in another way, it was comforting to know that a piece of all that was back with me. Safe.

I sit back as I watch Maysen watching cartoons with his beloved Blue Blanket (that's what he calls it). He requires such Blue Blanket on all trips and every night to "cozy-up with". Its amazing what we can form attachment to and what it means to us. I can only hope that his Blue Blanket means just as much to him in the years to come as my Soft meant to me.

Thanks for thinking of us, Grandma Edith, when you made those blankets. It's turned out to be more than just a blanket for me. Thanks to Grandma Sherrill for having M's Blue Blanket made especially for him.

Written in plain ink-pen, this states "Made By Grandma Shindley"