The Heron's Nest

Editors' Choices

The Heron's Nest Award

Our DNA can be left virtually everywhere we go. In our homes, inside our automobiles, on chairs at restaurants. On our friends' and relatives' furniture and clothing, on the poodle next door. We are likely to leave our DNA on everything we touch. A blanket used all winter on a bed or couch will collect DNA from everyone who feels its comfort, and from the cat or dog or pot-bellied pig who joins them. Yet there is far more than DNA within the weave of a long-used blanket—intangibles that are nevertheless very real and often incredibly significant: gentle and not-so-gentle memories and reminders of what used to be, of what may come; plans both failed and realized; lost dreams, new dreams; sorrow and celebration; healing and renewed purpose.

Our personal involvement with blankets begins almost immediately following birth and continues throughout our lives. A swaddling blanket protects a baby from the startle reflex, helping the little one feel secure. As we age, a blanket gives comfort and warmth, which signals love and protection. Blankets, beyond their primary purpose, are an important part of our lives. As Charles M. Schultz, author of the comic strip Peanuts, expressed it, "Security is a thumb and a blanket."¹

Juxtaposing the blanket with the season evokes a winter scene, the ground blanketed with snow. Yet the fabric cover and the snow cover provide care in much the same way. The constant climate under snow can be much warmer than conditions above, protecting insulated lives such as small animals scurrying beneath and plants that thrive. A snow blanket that seems to put life on pause actually sustains it.

I imagine a child's blanket in paul m.'s sensually satisfying haiku. I know how the child first clings to it, eventually dragging it all around the house, taking it everywhere. In the grocery store, at kindergarten, in the park, and at Grandma's overnight. Heaven help the parents whose child suddenly realizes that Banky was left behind at that hotel two states away, or worse, at the beach!

This blanket can be washed only after the child is sound asleep—and for health's sake it must be washed often (all those store floors, bathrooms, the zoo, the farm, the upset stomach). There are subtle changes in the blanket with the passage of time. With the first several dryings, a parent may wonder at the amount of lint in the lint trap, a thickness that can be peeled away from the screen, a small blanket cast from the larger one. As the toddler-sized blanket goes through many washings, it gets thinner and thinner, as does the layer of fuzz in the trap. Perhaps a parent reflects that the child's love suffuses the blanket, and the lost lint as well. Someday the maturing child will ignore the worn-out "lovie," pushing it aside; but the parents may find themselves unable to discard something so precious, this bit of fabric that gave immeasurable comfort to their child.

In and between the lines of "some of the blanket," paul m. offers readers plenty of room to imagine. To me, his composition is exactly right, needing neither to lose nor gain a single word. It is the valued kind of poem that evokes an almost physical awareness of the author's surroundings in the moment, as if I were there beside him. The two winter kigo denote cold weather; however, the words "blanket" and "lint trap," with the implication that they are fresh from the dryer, evoke warmth. This haiku will stay with me, and I will think of it often in the coming winter.

Regardless of the blanket's size, I am sure it has a special purpose. I am grateful to paul m. for reminding me to appreciate even the smallest comforting moments from day to day. No doubt there is some of the author in the lint trap, too.

Ferris Gilli
December 2021

1. Schultz, Charles M. (1963). Security is a thumb and a blanket. Determined Productions, Inc.