Wrinkled and aged, my hands no longer feel like they once did. Fine lines contour my skin like a map and steadiness wobbles away from my feeble grasp, as I waver over the brown boxes that mirror my own creases. The cardboard that once was so taut and firm now slouches and hangs over. Almost forgotten. Yet within this sliver of the dusty halo where we sit together in, the boxes remembers my forgotten life.

The box in front of me is closed, but there’s a faint inkling of what already lies inside.  Although it is barely indiscernible from the surrounding collected clumps, this one box in my lap feels different. The same wrinkles that fold the other boxes fold this one, but this one box seems as delicate and fragile as a lingering whisper. It’s like an unexpected gift—a gift that you didn’t ask for or even know you wanted but still fills you with glowing warmth all the same. The box is even wrapped up in the fine layer of dust that sparkles in the sunlight.

Suddenly, I’m blowing out the swaying flames on my birthday candles. Everything but dust and cardboard around me.

Slow but eager, I unwrap the box, hoping to satisfy this dancing curiosity. After the box opens its mouth and I peek down at its inside, a wave of familiarity hits me.

“Remember me?”

My blue blanket sits inside, finally remembered after so many years past. Hesitant to shatter a still memory, we only stare at each other at first as ripples of fondness and surprise and nostalgia and wistfulness swim around us. I see my hands pass these swirls of reminiscence and clasp onto that cloth of soft blueness. Even after all these years, I still feel the silky softness and the subtle smoothness as I delicately brush against the blanket that is now sprawled onto my lap.

I consider the blueness in front of me. As I look deeper and deeper into this wistful blueness, those frayed, worn ends begin to mend themselves back together, returning back to childhood and innocence.

❈

There’s a pink bear in my arms. Beary. I remember you. Its arms and legs hanging limply are sparsely stuffed compared to its body. I always held onto you a little too tight. I wrap this baby bear into the blanket where I make sure none of its limbs are flailing out. Arms and legs tucked in. Blanket snuggly wrapped. Four years old, I carry my bear and my blanket into my pink bed; they are my two treasures.

Shining in the corner, the blue, fishbowled nightlight comforts me in the darkness. The covers are perfectly tucked in, the closet is closed, and my door is left slightly ajar. Thanks Dad.

But then my bed transforms into the living room, as my blanket is now my cape. It hugs my small shoulders, fluttering and floating behind me as I run up and down the hallways and staircases. I feel big and cool. I was so small. As I climb up castle stairs—I’m on a mission— there is my magical cape always following near. No one but me knows my secret rescue plan.

Now the precious blanket is missing. Someone stole it! I can’t remember where I left it last, but someone must’ve taken it! Jumping to pre-school conclusions, I panic. I want to cry. I’m confused. Where is it? It’s not under that fort made up of pillows or on my unmade bed or on my parents’ bed.

“Mommy!,” I scream, knowing that she probably knows where it’s hiding. This time, she shows me that the blanket was hiding in a dark cave that groans and mumbles loudly. She tries to explain to she was only just washing it, yet all I think about is “I knew it.”

I grow from a kindergartener to a second grader to a fourth grader, climbing through all ages and sizes. Soon, I grow out of the blanket also. It is gone from the couch it used to always lay in, gone from the center of my bed, gone from my little fists. It settles in corner of my room, or maybe it’s under my chair or stuffed between the cracks of my bed and the wall. But unlike a few years ago, I barely notice.

Instead, I become enraptured with Silly Bands, cards, friendship bracelets, Smelly Markers. There’s so much to keep up with, from trading to giving to keeping,  and my elementary self wants it all.

“I’ll give you this sparkly one for those two blue ones.”

“Don’t blend the markers!”

Soft squeals of excitement echo around me.

It feels like there’s nothing changing year after year, learning and seeing the same old stuff over and over again. But then I feel tears on my cheek, hands clasped around my hands, as my friends and I recollect over our past six elementary years together. You guys were so young, what are you doing?, I laugh at myself, thinking of all the things and stuffs that seemed so important and momentous at their time but so trivial now. Nonetheless, I still feel now a hint of the sadness and nervousness and excitement that filled me then.

So, I return to the blanket, old and tattered in my arms. Its worn ends and holey cloth are impossible to miss, but still I see its youth and comfort, which had been sown so many years ago. Bending time itself, the blanket seems frozen in time. Ageless. But my own wrinkled hands betray otherwise, nudging me a subtle reminder of the impossibility of frozen time. But then again, to my four-year-old self, anything is possible.

As I tenderly plant it back in its new home, my blanket murmurs one last time to me: “Don’t forget me.”

And I smile to myself, “How could I?”