Ghostie: A Tribute

Here is a picture of Marley last year, sound asleep, with the sweet and stinky breath that I love to inhale when I check on her and kiss her cheek at night.  Next to her is Ghostie, a sweet and stinky blue stuffed ghost I bought for Bean about two years ago, at Starbucks of all places.  You know I love my precious lattes.  Marley started really loving Ghostie this fall when I brought him out around Halloween.  Before that, the closest thing she had to a tattered friend was a small black and white beanbag cat she called Sally.  (Sally vacationed with us on Cape Cod last summer and is still somewhere in P-Town.  I think the loss of Sally affected me more than Marley.  She was really just starting to get into her, and I was ready to crawl down Commercial Street after the Carnival's Wild, Wild West parade to look for a cat who might have gotten lost amidst the piles of tossed beads.  I didn't, though, and Marley moved on after only two brief and despondent episodes.)

Around the same time Ghostie re-emerged, Marley also started carrying a blanket around.  I was nine months pregnant and re-washing and organizing all of Marley's baby clothes and blankets, including a white one with a patterned jungle scene on one side.  I suspect that this blanket became desirable once Marley understood that it was for the baby.  She had just turned three, she coveted her cousin Emma's Pink Fluffy (Fifi), or at least its palliative magic, and she was intrigued by several library books starring missing blankies.  I'm pretty sure the whole thing started as an affectation.  But there it is.  And so while other pals have taken turns on Marley's bed or piled in her arms while she parades or stomps around the house, Ghostie and Blankie have joined the inner circle.

Ghostie is actually a pretty cool sidekick.  He's got crazy wonky eyes, his tongue sticks out, and his mouth is a deep, rectangular cavern that can hold many, many pom-poms.  Even though Marley usually refers to Ghostie with male pronouns, she claims that Ghostie is a girl.  Today, she stuffed her into a tissue box and told me that Ghostie was a "Jack-on-the-Box".  Ghostie has gone to bed in Rudy's sleep sacks.  When Marley visited newborn Rudy in the hospital, she brought Ghostie and swaddled her as tightly as I swaddled Toot.  Ghostie has been to Show and Tell, to Pennsylvania, and earlier this week she was part of an elaborate display Marley set up on my nightstand, resting in the blinged-out Blankie hammock.