Think Like CJ

I know these daily prompts are usually attacked with more authentic, off-the-cuff language. But as a writer with a million emotions flooding my frontal lobe at any given moment, I can’t help but respond with nostalgia to most. This one is dear to my heart, and fresh.

“You better be careful washing that every day. You’re not gonna have much of it left,” my momma often says to me.

I always joke that she should get me one of those flag display cases so I can finally put it away, but not away away. Just… maybe stop sleeping with it, per se.

My sanction from birth. A gift from my grandma. On my dad’s side.
The Teddy Bear Blanket.

“You used to call it your Teddy Bear Blankey,” my grandma reminded me once, her voice caught between a chuckle.
“You’d pinch a piece between your fingers and rub them together all the time,” she added, smiling, but her eyes had that glassy, distant kind of warmth. The kind that says I miss those days, too.

We don’t see each other much in my adult years, but these memories, the ones she gives me, without even trying—stain my twenties in the best possible way.

My Teddy Bear Blanket is cream in nature, but stained from the many years’ debris. It is soft to the touch, worn thin by three decades of closeness.
She’s wounded in a few places, little scars where fluff tries to escape. But I’ve gotten good at tucking it all back in, doing my best to keep her whole. Fluffy, or not.

It’s funny how something so small can hold so much:
The scent of childhood.
The feel of safety.

I used to think I just liked the way it felt, that little frayed corner between my thumb and index finger. But looking back, I think I was anchoring myself. That blanket wasn’t just softness and scent; it was silence. It helped muffle the chaos — the raised voices, the sudden crashes, the footsteps that made my stomach drop. While I sat on the floor with cartoons playing too loud, that scrap of fabric steadied me. It knew more than I did then, about the walls we don’t talk about, and the women who survived behind them.

One early evening, not long ago, an application from our local coffee shop, The Cup, practically shouted at me:
What are three fun facts about yourself?

1. I still sleep with my baby blanket.
2. I have a cat with one eye.
3. My dog’s name is Oso.

I left the coffee shop, texting a friend on the way out:
“I’m so weird!”
But I smiled when I typed it.

Isn’t it strange, how when put on the spot, our brains forget all the soft, wonderful things about us?

Like a threadbare blanket still full of meaning.
Like love, worn in. Not worn out.