Make Me a Blanket Fort
I wish that, at 3:30 on a Thursday when all the hours have been two days long and every day a month, someone would come into the room with a big wrinkled sheet from the hamper and say, “I think I know what you need.”
I wish someone would make me a blanket fort.
I wish someone else would have the idea about what to do with my wild eyes.
I wish someone would push the furniture out of order to delight me, and shake the wrinkles out of the sheet with a snap in the air. I wish someone would let the sheet drift onto my head and then say, “Where’s Katie?” I wish someone would play to make me laugh.
I wish someone would stand on the chair and pin the sheet high, high, higher than I can reach, so my fort would be bigger than me, but just a little.
I wish someone would wait with the thumbtack in its place, turn around and say “Here?” I wish someone would make a hole in their wall right where I told them.
I wish that I could duck under the cloth that someone else washed and pinned up on the line to dry in the sun and meet this space, formerly known as a corner in the living room, somehow made larger by its new cloth wall.
I wish that someone would bring me armloads of pillows and blankets from a grown-up’s bed and dump them on the floor like an offering of socks. I wish someone would know to bring my stuffy, one that someone bought me because I simply loved turtles or tigers, one that’s as big as my whole chest and as soft as rabbit fur. I wish I named it something inconsequential that drew a smile from someone who loves my ideas.
I wish someone would leave me alone to feather my nest and put all the pillows in just the right places to create a place that holds my body perfectly. I wish they’d come back with a plate of cookies and a drink with a straw. I wish they’d knock on my pillow door.
I wish someone would bring me markers and paper and leave again so I could sit in my quiet soft place and write a sign that says KEEP OUT and another one that says KATIE’S FORTRESS OF AWESOMENESS. I wish someone would look at those signs and praise my emotional intelligence and creativity. I wish someone would love my selfishness from a distance.
I wish someone would pull up the sofa cushions to reinforce my walls and vacuum up the goldfish crumbs while they’re at it.
I wish I could lie in that place and read a book and eat my cookies and faintly register the sound of someone making a hot dinner just for me, something that just tastes good. Hot buttered noodles with lots of salt, or stuffed quesadillas oozing with cheese. I wish I could lie in that place and never, not once, believe that I should be doing something else. I wish I could know I was doing exactly right.
I wish someone would bring me my dinner in my fort and leave again. I wish I had a place where all I had to be was chaotic and comforted and selfish and hungry. Where being chaotic and comforted and selfish and hungry felt like a mood, not a failure.
I wish I could hear the people who care for me murmuring loyal, loving things about me in the kitchen. “She feels things deeply,” instead of, “What a drama queen,” and “I’m proud of her for knowing she needed a break,” instead of, “She needs to suck it up.”
If I had a million dollars I’d start a blanket fort ranch for grown-ups. You can come and say KEEP OUT. You can surround yourself with soft things, and protect the softness with walls, and eat something you didn’t have to cook and drink something you didn’t have to pour and I’ll sit outside the thin cloth walls and talk to the people who love you about what makes you wonderful, the way we do for our children and so rarely for ourselves.
Especially right now. I know. It’s so hard right now.
When we had to evacuate New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina every highway went on contraflow, which meant every lane of every interstate was going out, out, out. That’s how I feel. Like the interstate on contraflow, pouring out, out, out.
I know. It’s so hard right now.
I think I know what you need...
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xoxo