My Family is a Moldy Old Beach Blanket

 

It’s the summer of 2020. We’ve been taking the pandemic seriously and haven’t ventured much beyond our neighborhood. We’re expecting a long streak of very hot days and my wife is wishing she could take the kids to the beach. But wisely all of the Minneapolis beaches and wading pools are closed. A friend of hers offers an old inflatable pool which we pick up one day while running errands, faces dutifully covered with masks.

My wife wastes no time in inflating the pool on our patio and filling it with water. I notice the edge of a blanket sticking out from under one side of the pool. “Hey, that’s my parents’ old beach blanket,” I say. “Why is it under the pool?”

Already wearing her giant sun hat my wife responds, “I wanted something to protect the pool from the brick.” While I agree this is a smart idea on her part I am annoyed that she didn’t ask before using it, and say so.

She responds from behind her giant Hepburn-esque sunglasses, “It’s just an old blanket. Nothing will happen to it.” Again, she’s right. It IS an old blanket. But it’s my blanket. My family’s blanket. Something that was part of my life before I ever knew my wife. For as long as I can remember.

I sit down in one of the patio chairs, “Yeah it’s old, but it was my parents’! We took it to the beach, we put it on the floor of our tent when we went camping.” I try to get the tone of annoyance in my voice just right. My wife continues to fill the pool and I settle back into the chair to read in the shade.

Once filled my wife dips her feet in the pool and sits down across from me. After a minute she says, “I don’t know why you care so much about stupid old objects when you hate your family so much.” I roll my eyes to myself and think, here we go again.

I give her a look, “I don’t hate my family.” It’s true, I don’t. But it no longer exists and I’m glad of that. My parents had a toxic marriage that had lasting effects on all of us. They divorced shortly after I graduated from college and we all went our separate ways. In time we were all better off. I started a new family of my own. And I was proud of that. But my wife never seemed to understand the way I held my old family at arm’s length so her shorthand for that was “you hate your family.”

I put my book down and look at her. “You know I don’t hate my family. How do you still not understand this, after all these years?” The heat index is near 100. My kids splash in the pool and squirt each other with water pistols while my wife dangles her legs in the cool water.

“It’s just that… that blanket is something from my family that I’ve had for a long time. We put it in our tent when we went camping. It reminds me of things,” I continue. I struggle mentally with a deeper explanation but my brain isn’t up to the task at the moment. The kids start fighting with each other and the moment passes.

The heatwave passes too. We have a cool, rainy week and soon the pool is full of dirty water and leaves. It begins to sag as air leaks out and suddenly we look like one of “those” families. Especially after it sits like that for a week. Eventually my wife decides she’s done with the pool and it’s time to put it away. She drains it and once empty tips it up to dry out and we both see it: the black spots all over the blanket. Mold. I know the blanket is ruined.

“Sorry,” my wife offers.

“Well that’s ruined,” I respond. She tries to be helpful, “I can wash it.”

“Really,” I say. “With mold? I don’t think so.”

The blanket continues to live on the patio for many days, even after the pool is rolled up and put in the garage. I come home from work one day and ask why the blanket is still there. “I like that it killed all the weeds!” my wife says.

I stop at the door, “I just wish you would’ve asked before ruining it,” and suddenly my brain lights up with memories.

It’s August of 1974 and my parents are on their honeymoon in Hawaii. They purchase the blanket from a shop near the beach. It’s cream colored with wide, light green strips across it. They lay it across the golden sands of a Hawaiian beach.

It’s July of 1983 and we’re camping at Gooseberry Falls State Park in northern Minnesota. My dad has just finished putting up our tent. It’s an old Sears Army-style canvas tent. It looks like set dressing from an episode of MASH. My mom spreads the heavy blanket on the floor of the tent before my little brother and I crawl in to unroll our sleeping bags. The smell of the waxed canvas is strong.

It’s the summer of 1986 and we take one of our few big family vacations: a road trip to Ocean City, Maryland. We lay the blanket out on the Atlantic beach, in front of the boardwalk. My dad falls asleep on the blanket the second day we’re there and gets such a severe sunburn he spends the next two days in bed. After that we rent an umbrella to shade the blanket. I learn about hermit crabs and get seawater up my nose for the first time. I discover a tangle of muscles and seaweed and bring them home in a bucket, packed in the back of our Volkswagen Quantum wagon.

It’s the spring of 1995 and my friend Beau and I are going to camp in northern Minnesota for Spring Break. I find our camping supplies in the basement and the blanket is folded up next to them. As I lay my hand on the thick fabric I can instantly smell the damp waxed canvas scent of our old Sears tent. I can see the shoreline of Lake Superior. I can see my family sitting around the fire, making S’mores and telling spooky stories. I can see my dad swearing after he hits his thumb splitting wood. I can see Superior National Forest from the lookout on the top Carlton Peak.

It’s the summer of 1997 and I go camping at Scenic State Park with all of my old High School friends. The tent and blanket come with us. In the middle of our first night we realize we’ve pitched the tent on a bit of a slope as one of my friends keeps sliding into the corner of the tent. He grabs his sleeping bag and goes outside, opting to sleep under the stars next to the fire pit. We’re all glad to find him in the morning uneaten by wild animals. I go canoeing for the first time in my life.

It’s early spring of 2000 and the blanket now lays folded in my parents’ closet. They sit in bed reading when my dad tells my mom he wants a divorce. In the ensuing division of household objects I take ownership of all the camping supplies, including the blanket. I’m glad to have it.

It’s the summer of 2002 and I go camping with the woman I will eventually marry in 2006. The old Sears tent is long gone but the blanket comes with us to lay on the bottom of our little two person REI tent. A rabbit visits our campsite and my future wife feeds it a carrot. We hike up the Tettegouche River to discover the rustic cabins on the shore of Mic Mac Lake.

It’s June of 2016 and my wife and our two kids are camping in Yellowstone National Park. It’s early in the season and still very cold at night. My wife buys an extra pair of heavy fleece socks at one of the camp stores. The blanket lays under all four of our sleeping bags in our bigger four person REI tent. We climb to the summit of Mt. Washburn. We drive through a terrible but beautiful rainstorm in the Bighorn Mountains. It hails the morning we have to pack up and leave. My son drops his brand new stuffed wolf from Wall Drug in a urinal at an interstate rest stop. From then on the toy is referred to as “Toilet Wolf.”

It’s the summer of 2020 and I finally find the words to describe all of this to my wife. How even though it’s just a stupid old blanket, it is also all of these other things.

The next day I come home from work to find the blanket wadded up in a laundry basket on our patio. The black spots are still there. I ask and my wife explains she tried washing it. She’ll try soaking it in a bucket of vinegar next, she says. I tell her not to bother. It is just a stupid old blanket and I won’t miss it but it is also all of those other things. I go outside and put the blanket in the brown City of Minneapolis garbage cart and say goodbye to another piece of my old family.