Our Daughter, Her Blanket, A Lesson in Parenthood

Today’s blog is a blast from the past, written way back during the summer of 2018, originally published in a Facebook post (of all things). I wrote it following one of our first family excursions into continental Europe from our new home in London.

At the time, we had been living in London about seven months. We were still adapting to our new experiences as American expats. It was an exciting time for the family, but it also took some getting used to. Our daughters were ages 9 and 6 when the post was written. They are now 16 and 13, and we’re back in the States.

Life changes quickly. We have moved back and forth between continents, and our daughters have grown from kids into adolescents and now teens. Before you know it they’ll be grown women, on their own, no longer dancing to the rhythm of their parents.

There’s a certain melancholy to that, yes. But also much joy. I look forward to seeing how they venture forth in their own adult skins.

Do you remember being a young adult, taking over the reins of your own life? I bet you do. I bet the memories are vivid.

Personally, I was a mixture of cluelessness and determination, unsure of my footing, stumbling around, but happier than hell to be out on my own, and welcoming the challenge, and somehow managing to make my way through it, little by little, inch by inch.

Our daughters will do better than I did – which is what you want. They’re probably wiser than I was in certain ways, more sophisticated in the ways of the world, able to draw on more experiences. They are coming of age in very cynical times, as I did (late 70s, early 80s). But they’re not as cynical as I was. They’ll do fine as long as they keep their own counsel. I trust they will.

This Facebook post is one of exactly two that I copied and pasted into a Word file before deactivating my Facebook account earlier this year, mainly to boycott Mark Zuckerberg and his endless greed and selfishness, but also to get away from all the platform’s toxic dysfunction and performative bullshit. But I digress….

The reason I saved this post is that it captures a moment in time when I found out what we as parents are willing to do for our kids. There’s nothing terribly dramatic about it. It’s almost inane when you compare it to all the parents out there who have to fight and scratch every day to feed their kids and protect them from harm.

But it was still one of the most memorable experiences of our time in London and my evolution as a parent.

I’m sharing it now because it’s a happy memory, and a lasting one, and one that other parents and future parents might enjoy.

Some of it has been tweaked from the original, but not much (I am not using anyone’s real names, for example). Hope you enjoy.

*****

Let’s call this photo: LJ’s Blanket.

Pretty mundane, yes?

Well, there’s a story behind it that every parent and/or kid and/or former kid can probably relate to. The story is a little long, but I’m just writing it to have a record of it so I can lord it over my kids one fine day, or just in case anyone else out there can relate, or just record it for my own personal memory.

Our daughter LJ has had this blanket since she was born. It was a gift to her from her aunt (my wife’s sister) while my wife was still pregnant.

LJ played with it in her crib. She kept it by her side constantly. She dragged it with her everywhere she went, through three different homes and dozens of trips from Hawaii and California to Boston, Orlando, New York, St. Louis, Atlanta, Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach, Asheville and all stops in between, and then over here to London.

LJ is a pretty level-headed kid who doesn’t get too overly dramatic about stuff. But this blanket, it was something she always had and always loved and never lived without.

Naturally, LJ took it on our recent family vacation to various parts Europe: EuroDisney, Paris, Strasbourg, Zurich and Milan. We booked two rooms at each hotel since the rooms are small. I stayed with LJ in one room, and my wife stayed with our other daughter, AC, in the other.

On our first night in Milan, at about 11 pm, as we were about to turn in, LJ looks at me in a panic and says she can’t find her blanket (she calls it “oopsie,” but never mind that…).

“I think I left it in the last hotel!” she said.

That hotel would have been in Zurich, a three-hour train ride away.

I asked LJ to double-check all of her things. She did. I double-checked my things. No blanket. We both know she left it under the covers at the hotel in Zurich.

LJ starts looking pretty heartbroken and I know, right away, that there is no solution to this problem but to track down the blanket.

“Can you call the hotel in Zurich?” LJ asked.

I had to Google the number but I found it, and called. The guy who answered said he didn’t know anything about a missing blanket, and suggested I call back in the morning. I start entertaining thoughts of taking the early morning train back to Zurich. I even investigate cheap flights. But no. No need to be hasty here. Just call in the morning.

I do that. The morning desk clerk said she hadn’t seen a missing blanket but she would check with housekeeping and get back to me. We wait a day and I don’t hear from her, so we decide to have my wife call the hotel this time, figuring a mother’s voice will command more attention.

When my wife does call back, she’s told the blanket isn’t there. Sorry. No blanket.

So I get on the phone and let the hotel clerk know that, you know, the blanket must be there. It’s definitely there. You might not have found it yet, but it’s there. It’s not your fault, I tell her. It’s our fault. But please, could you just look a little harder? You know how kids are with this stuff. It’s pretty important. Do us a solid, won’t you, and LOOK A LITTLE HARDER? Maybe check with the laundry? I will give you an extra 30 Swiss francs for tracking it down.

The hotel clerk said she would check with the laundry and get back to us.

Meantime, my wife and I decide to get a replacement blanket just in case the original one doesn’t show up. My wife gets the information from her sister about the blanket company, which I think is based in California. She finds the website and places an order to have it shipped to our home in London. We will try to fool LJ, although we’re doubtful she would be fooled by a replacement blanket, even if it is the exact same size, colors and pattern.

Then: A day or so later the hotel clerk emails me with a photo of the blanket.

“Is this the one?” she asks.

“It is!” I reply. “Thank you!”

The clerk said she will mail it to us. I say, “Great!”

Later, she emails me a copy of the postage receipt, along with a hotel receipt that includes the postage fee and the extra 30 francs I promised. Halleluiah, problem solved!

Except….except….it never comes. Days pass. A week passes. No blanket. LJ is worried. I’m worried. My wife is worried. Even AC, LJ’s younger sister, is worried. A package shows up at the door one day and I go, “Oh good!” And AC says, “Is that LJ’s blanket?”

But it wasn’t.

So I look up the postage receipt in my email inbox to see if there is any number I can call to track down the package. But it’s all written in German, or Swiss German (not sure), so I can’t figure out a thing.

I contact a friend of mine, JVZ, who is from Holland and speaks a bunch of different languages, including German, which I assume is close to Swiss German.

I forward a copy of the receipt to JVZ and she looks at it. She emails me back and says there is no tracking number. It was sent through regular mail, she says, which doesn’t require a tracking number. This is not good, because we’ve had some problems with deliveries here in the UK.

More time passes. LJ is pretty cool about things, but she still asks about the blanket. I email the hotel and say the blanket still hasn’t arrived. Is there any chance it may have been returned there? Nope, I’m told. But they will keep an eye out.

Then one morning we slip out of the house for about an hour and when we return there is a note from the postal service saying they tried to deliver a package that requires us to pay a customs charge. Since nobody was here to pay they had to haul it back to the post office, which is about 15 minutes away by bus. So we go down there a couple days later, on a Saturday, to see what it is. I’m sure it’s LJ’s blanket. It must be.

Well, I was half right. It was the replacement blanket from California. A bummer, because it’s still not the real thing. LJ asks if it’s her blanket but we stall her, say it’s just clothes Mommy ordered. My plan is to wash the replacement blanket a couple times, then tumble dry it, thinking maybe that it will look aged enough to be the real thing.

By now I’ve given up hope that the real blanket will ever arrive. I just assumed the postal service delivered it to the wrong place and whoever got it just decided to either keep it or donate it or trash it or whatever.

Then this morning, after a bike ride, I get home and open the front door. And lo and behold, there is a package from Switzerland. There’s a tear in the package. There is a blanket inside. LJ’s blanket. I can barely conceal my glee.

I call LJ to come downstairs. I hide the package behind my back. I whip it out and shove it at her. She looks at it sort of curiously, opens it, sees her blanket, and beams. Just beams. She’s had it by her side all day. Like I said, she’s a level-headed kid. But she’s still a kid.

If you’d have told me 10 years ago what I would do if my kid left a blanket behind in a hotel room, I would have said just buy her a new one. Problem solved. It’s just a blanket.

Well, I’ve been a parent for about nine-and-half years now. And you know what?

It’s not just a blanket, is it?

Image: This is LJ’s blanket, September 2025. The same one she had since she was born, that we thought we’d lost seven years ago. She still takes it on trips – but now we make double sure she has it before we leave.