The story of a baby blanket

A blanket can be, as well as “the warmth”, also a small unshakable certainty. A few days ago I was talking about children’s sleep with my friend Zeudi, who told me a beautiful story. When her son Jacopo was a baby, he used to fall asleep in the pram with a very sweet gesture of his mother, who caressed him between the eyes with a chenille blanket. That chenille blanket became his moment of cuddling, of relax, and it has also accompanied him in his cot. He continued to fall asleep peacefully alone thanks to that blanket, an object that contained a world: the feeling of maternal contact, perhaps the smell of his mum, everything a child is looking for when he falls asleep. Then Jacopo grew up and found himself having to sleep away from home alone for a school camp, when he was only 8 years old! Once the backpack was done, he decided to leave the blanket at home; but mummy Zeudi slipped it into his backpack secretly, with a note, to be sure he could fall asleep with serenity. This story moved me, because it is the synthesis of how much gestures and bonds sometimes also pass through objects that become a symbol and contain much more than they simply are. After all, is not a blanket just a piece of fabric? In this case it is also affection, protection, the possibility of growing and being independent knowing that mummy’s love is always accompanying us.