A Truth That Linus and Countless Others Know

I could hear the panic in my friend’s voice when she called to relay news of her family’s calamity . . . the gravity of which could be understood only by a parent who had once stood in her shoes.

Ki-Ki was missing.

It had disappeared during a trip to the shopping mall, although bedtime came before anyone realized it was gone.

And though my friend had searched her car, the stroller, the parking lot and every store along her route, she could find no sign of Ki-Ki--the tiny pink baby blanket that had been the constant companion of her middle child, Camille.

“The last time I saw Ki-Ki, she was draped over the bar of the stroller and we were in line at Baby Gap and the kids were fussing and I was just trying to keep them occupied long enough for us to get out of there,” she said.

When they got home there was dinner to fix and baths to give and stories to read and tired children . . . and all of a sudden, no Ki-Ki.

And if you’ve ever had a child who loved a blankie . . . if you, in fact, are still holding on to your inner blankie, you’ll know I’m talking big trouble.

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I used to consider stories of the lengths to which parents had gone to recover missing toys and blankets to be just one more example of parental overindulgence.

There was the Ventura County father who spent hours combing through giant trash bins behind a theater complex to find the dingy, one-eyed teddy bear his 5-year-old had left on a movie seat.

And the woman I encountered at the Sports Arena as the circus let out, offering a $20 bribe to a security guard if he would please, please, let her back inside to search the stands for her daughter’s blankie.

Then I became the mother of a child who loved a blankie but couldn’t seem to keep it in hand. And there I was crawling under restaurant tables, between movie rows, beneath carousels of department store clothes, looking for a grimy, tattered blanket, prodded by a wailing child.

I learned to stifle my embarrassment as I made the rounds of store clerks and restaurant workers, asking whether anyone had seen a small green quilt with a patchwork design. And I discovered our ranks are legion, as I was met with sympathy, even in the most unlikely of places.

Like the time we were on vacation and our 2-year-old lost her blankie at the airport in Chicago as we waited to board our plane. We were 150 miles away, at Grandma’s house, when we discovered it was gone.

I called the airline and spoke to a ticket agent, who understood my plight intimately. He had spent much of his life, he said, searching for his own daughter’s errant blankie.

He dispatched a crew to conduct a search and called back just minutes later. “We found it,” he declared. “And we’ll put it on the next plane. . . . I’ll have it on your doorstep before baby’s next nap.”

He could make that guarantee because he understood one thing: Without blankie, there would be no sleep.

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It has been more than a week since Ki-Ki disappeared. And Camille still wakes crying, calling out in the night, “Ki-Ki, where are you?”

She rejects her big sister’s offer to share her own lovey--a faded, much-worn pajama sleeper. And she sits stone-faced as her mother suggests one substitute after another--a newer blankie, a softer blankie, one that’s a prettier shade of pink.

“That not Ki-Ki” is all she will say, shaking her head inconsolably.

And it breaks my friend’s heart to watch her not-quite-2-year-old bump up against the hard reality of loss at such a tender age.

“I feel like I’ve committed a capital crime,” she says, stung by guilt. “Why did I let her take Ki-Ki out of the house? What was I thinking, taking them to the mall? Why wasn’t I at home, reading them stories, sitting in the rocking chair, holding Camille and Ki-Ki on my lap? What kind of mother am I?”

And I would laugh at her earnestness if I didn’t recognize it so well; if I didn’t realize that blankie is love, writ large, in a young child’s life . . . and sometimes beyond.

I think about a column I wrote last year, when I was trying to divest my 8-year-old of her treasured baby blankie. More than 300 people wrote in response, many of them chastising me. It was a testament to the lifelong soothing power that rests between the folds of a child’s blankie.

“I hold several advanced degrees from the Ivy League,” one reader e-mailed. “I have been the CEO of more than one successful company. I have traveled the world, as special envoy to four American presidents. And I still sleep with my blankie. . . .

“I have friends who drink or take medication to calm their stresses. I simply pick up my blankie, breathe in and smile as I go to sleep. . . . And I have never found a more dependable source to comfort me.”

And I think of baby Camille alone in her crib and wonder if she’ll ever know a friend as pure and steadfast as Ki-Ki.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.