"Intricately Woven" By Mariapaula Gonzales
Photo by Megan Bucknall on Unsplash
It measures four-by-five feet, a woolen rectangle displaying three identical baby elephants. Its colors—clementine orange, ice-tinted blue, avocado green, and delicious strawberry cream cheese pink—delicately unveil a scene of youthful innocence. My blanket, mi cobijita, flew through the Colombian sky and landed safely in a package from my mother’s childhood friend. A week later, the precious gift stroked my rosy hands at birth.
I discovered in kindergarten that I was not a “stuffed animal” child. At our monthly show-and-tells, my friends shared their stuffed giraffes, life-size toy golden retrievers, and even their ordinary hazelnut teddy bears, eager to flaunt their obsession with the synthetic fiber-stuffed toy. Although I have never had an emotional attachment to a stuffed animal, I caved in anyway and made my parents buy me a random stuffed cow whose skin was too lumpy for my liking. I quickly abandoned the stuffed cow and returned to mi cobijita. I was consumed with touching the blanket, petting it, and evidently biting it, at every instance. Subconsciously pulling the blanket into my arms, my fingers caressed the delicacy. Its seamless texture coexisted perfectly with my five-year old hands, a bond that only deepened as I grew older.
At age seven, the unthinkable entered my world. From the piercing twinge in my feeble calf muscles, to the moment the aching words uttered by my doctor in the hospital hit me, mi cobijita never slipped off my colorless legs. As the sharp pinch of my first insulin injection at the hospital tore into my skin, I sharply pinched mi cobijita like a clenched fist, while my other hand gripped my fearful mother’s. A calloused bump on each of my ten fingers appeared in my early tween years after countless times of pricking my finger to check my blood sugar. Although I winced at any amount of pressure placed upon those callouses, mi cobijita tenderly treated the bumps like moisturizing hand lotion.
I grew out of chewing the blanket during middle school, but my touch-obsession continues. The fleecy layer of tranquility and innocence I cherished as a baby became a connection to my culture and provided warmth and clarity to my cluttered teen life. I have known since before I could comprehend words that my blanket has never left its designated spot on my bed. When I was ten years old, I learned about mi cobijita’s origin—the breathtaking country of Colombia.
The Colombian material, the intimate softness that brushes my fingers with every touch, ignited a solidarity with a heritage I begged to learn more about to explore the cultural spirit within me. Along with the woolen threads intricately woven into mi cobijita, I learned about Colombia’s infamous tokens: the emeralds, the coffee beans, and the heated soccer matches. I breathed in the scent of the country, an earthy, hot smell with a hint of freshly grown Juan Valdez coffee, as my parents shared these stories with me. I grew up with the notion that a blanket is supposed to offer heat and comfort; but mi cobijita did more.
High school was a battlefield where I fell victim to perfectionism and anxiety. I took to the piano, its glossy white and black keys, a newfound surface that gave me pleasure. The harmony in the tune of the piano and my raspy voice soothed my tangled mind. My anxious thoughts, dancers roaming around in my head, often forced me to take a pencil and let the uneasiness travel as lead on the paper, releasing the worries out of my soul. Though I will tell my friends and family that songwriting and listening to music was my most significant coping method (don’t get me wrong, music was definitely an outlet), I don’t think I realized until I gripped my childhood cobijita how my rapid heart rate relaxed, my muscles loosened, and my teeth unclenched. The clamorous voices echoing loudly in my head, headaches that hindered my productivity, quieted down as my ice-cold hands touched the heat of the pastel colors.
As a teen I re-discovered the beauty of mi cobijita, not only its attractive hues but its consistent presence in my life. My newborn self sought comfort in the tangible aspects of the blanket: the smell of my mother, a humble scent of lavender; its bright colors that make me love the color light pink; and its thickness that provides heat to my body. Now, I rarely wear it as a proper blanket. I gather the four-by-five-foot layer of protection and tenderness into a ball and hug it tightly in my arms, a pre-bedtime routine that falls quite perfectly into my muscle memory.
Through the thick, intricate layers of mi cobijita, my cultural emblem, my warmth, I have discovered the convolution of my tangled mind. I’ve treated the stressed-out, nail-biting Mariapaula with a simple hug of the rectangular-shaped cloth, the proud, sentimental Mariapaula after writing her first song with a delicate brush of the fingers, and I’ve nursed the frustrated, heartbroken Mariapaula as if mi cobijita were an immense tissue, a domain where tears are welcomed, not shunned. I receive delicacy and intimacy through my hands simply by touching mi cobijita, a delicacy and intimacy that pacifies my soul and untangles my mind.
Mariapaula Gonzales is sixteen years old; she lives in West Hartford, CT. Maria writes that she has been singing since the age of four and that Spanish is her first language. “I definitely want to pursue a singing career, but I see journalism as my main area of study in college.”