I am my son's "pink blanket."

This morning, as I dropped my little boy off at day care, he demanded that I "sit inna chair!" -- and seemed to think that this command should last all day. He turned to one of his fellow daycarites and said "Where you Mommy, Nonathan?" They discussed this for a moment, and concluded "Mommy at working." Pretty good chatting, I thought. "Honey, Mommy has to go to work too -- I'll see you tonight," I told him. "No! You sit inna chair!" He climbed up onto me, to make sure I didn't go anywhere.

And then the snuggling began. Now, how is it that he knows to snuggle just when I'm most resolute to leave? It starts by pulling my arms around him, and rubbing his face against my inner arm. Soon he rivals the cat in his face-rubbing and purring routine -- he spins and climbs up on me and rubs his cheek on my face, or turns upside down and begins rubbing his face on my leg, while his feet flail around my head. He is a skin-rubbing fool. When we're home and my shoes are off, eventually there's a moment when I fear that he's going to gouge his own eyes out with my toes -- that's where I continue to draw the line. No toes in eyes. But the rest of the face-rubbing? Pure bliss.

I remember when he was a tiny little 7-pound bit of goo, formed into human shape by the footie-outfit that contained him, and couldn't remember how to go to sleep. Something told me that he needed a physical sensation, to help him remember to relax and succumb. I began to stand next to his bassinet, which was on our dresser, and very gently stroke his face from his forehead to his chin, and murmur quietly to him to go to sleep. Slowly, slowly, the pressure of my fingers got lighter and lighter, and my voice quieter and quieter, and eventually he was out. More than once, I feel asleep myself, and awoke as I hit the ground, standing there next to his bassinet, stroking his face.

I guess this instinct came from my own childhood. I, you see, was a Linus-child. There is a story that the infamous "pink blanket" was the blanket I came home from the hospital in, a gift from my grandmother's employer and close family friend. It was pink and very thick, and had a silky border that was pulled off and discarded over time, and without it I could not exist. I remember taking it with me on trips, folded up in my suitcase on airplanes for safekeeping. I remember as a girl of sleepover-age deciding that it was necessary to cut a section the size of a handkerchief out of one corner that I could hide in my sleeping bag, because I simply couldn't sleep without it. I remember visiting my grandmother one time and catching a cold, and having a visiting friend of my grandmother's say "she's just got fluff from that blanket in her nose." And there was the time we headed off on a long car trip, and were over an hour away before I realized that it wasn't in the car. My father pleaded with me: "If you can go without the blanket for this trip, I will buy you the biggest stuffed animal we can find." I was a very literalistic child. That gingerbread man was probably as big as I am now, and may very well still be in my parents' basement. Nevertheless, I was glad to get home to my blanket.

Because there was something that was brainstem-level soothing about having it, about putting my face against it. Something very much like rubbing my face against a person I loved.... Almost like going into a meditative state, or being hypnotized. It opened up the twilight between awake and asleep, something that we're pretty familiar with in my family, to last an eternity -- that blissful feeling of "Ooooh, I'm about to fall asleep but I can enjoy hovering here for another minute...."

And so in the great scheme of "things I've given my son," one of the ones that gives me the most satisfaction, really, is that sensation. That feeling of rubbing your face against something that makes you feel safe and secure and loved. I've been worried that he didn't develop a "lovey" like so many toddlers do -- but I get it now. *I* am his lovey. His "pink blanket."

I can't think of a better thing to be.