I tied a bandana to the end of a stick and ran away from home more times than I can count. Except that usually it was a cloth diaper tied to a yellow yardstick.
My great-grandmother gave a bunch of cloth diapers to my mom when I was born, but my mom wasn’t a cloth diaper kind of first-time parent, so they all became my blankies. Actually, they became my nigh-nights. The beautiful thing about the nigh-nights was that I got to be the kid with eight or ten blankies. I couldn’t tell them apart, so if one was in the laundry (nigh-nights doubled as excellent juice spill and baby drool absorbers), another was clenched in my fist, pressed against my cheek, or wrapped around a stuffed animal. Soft, white, scrappy squares of woven cotton fibers, all frayed around the edges. I used to roll them into sausages of soft folds, clumping the fine fringe at one end and pulling on it while I fell asleep.
Once, I spent the night at my grandmother’s house and forgot to pack a nigh-night. I had enough of them, you’d think it would be hard to forget to bring even just one. Without my comfort object, I cried upstairs in bed while my mom sat at the kitchen table, picking furiously at the hem of a dish towel with a seam ripper. Or maybe it was a machete, she was pretty desperate. She brought it to me in bed and I put the frayed edge to my cheek. I loved her for trying, but it just wasn’t the same. I loved sleeping over at my grandmother’s house. I felt safe there. But I needed to hold on to something soft and familiar to help me sleep.
The day before I came back to school for J-Term, I told my mom that I don’t think I’ve ever gotten very good at this coming and going thing, between school and home. I think I expected going away to college to feel a little like running away, indignantly packing up my things in a bundle and tying it to the end of a yardstick, slamming the door on my way out, calling home only once in awhile, and only just to say, “see, I don’t need you anymore!” That’s how I always felt, running away down the trail in the woods behind my house. Thinking that, if I had to, I could build a shelter in hollowed out tree trunk, catch the school bus from my neighbor’s stop like a fugitive, smuggle food from the cafeteria, even if I had to survive on Pop Tarts.
Or I could move to Grandmom’s house. After all, I had a nigh-night with me.
But then I would reach the end of the trail, time to set up camp, and without the sound of my own storming footsteps drowning out anything but childish anger burning in my ears, the woods sounded suddenly too quiet. I’d think about the sky getting dark and realize that I didn’t pack any socks and wonder what I was doing in the middle of nowhere and get just scared enough to go home.
When my dorm is this quiet at the end of a day when the fog never lifted and I don’t really know what I’m doing here, I don’t feel like I’ve run away with my pride and a Pop Tart tied up in a cloth diaper on the end of a stick. I feel like I’ve been sent to my room.
So, I’m packing to spend another weekend at home. I found a nigh-night in the hidden pocket inside my little suitcase. I think it’s been there for almost a year; I packed it there when I went to New Zealand, tucking it in my carry-on because it’s one of those things I didn’t think I could live without if the rest of my luggage got lost, and then forgot it was even there. I folded it up and brushed the frayed end against the palm of my hand, and then to my cheek. It’s still cuddlesome and intimately familiar to my touch.
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