As children, my sister and I looked just alike. We were Mom’s round two- bonus babies # 5 and 6, and apparently the twin girls my mother never had. She dressed us in matching floral one piece jumpsuits, complete with that bib collar. Mom bought us matching Molly dolls, matching bedding and matching Heelys (and matching injuries). Raised in the same household, so we spouted the same “Hey Arnold” lines. We’d finish each other’s sentences when quoting the Olsen twins, ad nauseam (sorry Fam.) We chanted the same dirtied -up nursery rhymes from school.
When it came down to it, our similarities were superficial. We couldn’t be less alike when it came to personality. Mykal spoke early, learned her phone number and address at two years old while I could time my pee on the potty to “polly put the kettle on.” Mykal was way more fashion conscious and put together at an early age, while I somehow managed to get past our mother and leave the house, wearing my thrift store red cowboy boots and a cheerleading skirt that came with a Halloween costume. We shopped at the same stores, but Mykal hung out with the cool popular girls who shopped at Limited Too, while I just hung around, looking like Thrift-Spice.
We were close despite our differences and there was one thing we both needed every night, without exception – a blanket. Neither of us could sleep without it! And like the two of us, our blankets filled the same need in very different ways. Mine was a thin polyester blend blanket, covered in Strawberry Shortcake. The original, Strawberry Shortcake from the 80s, the one with the yarn hair and a bonnet, not this new chick with a pink beret. Mykal’s was a fluffier, emerald polyester blanket trimmed in matching silk… which she liked to suck her thumb with. Another difference between the two of us.
Now, as adults, my blanket is threadbare, it’s nearly see-through. The characters have faded and the only remnant of Mykal’s blanket is a small sliver of silk she still holds dear. So, naturally as we have become older we have both searched near and far for blankets that would bring us warmth and the kind of individual comfort we got from our old childhood blankets. Mykal found her’s first and sent me one. We both noticed that we were always cuddled up with them when we talked and I’d see her’s, in the background where she’d dragged it all over her house. We have both tried other blankets, but keep coming back to the same one, now I have three different colors and I keep them around the house in different rooms, all of them at arm’s reach, all of them comforting and it makes it a little extra special that Mykal found the same thing, in a different color.