Before I can personally remember it, I sucked my thumb and ran my fingers over the satin on the blanket’s edge when I napped and/or went to bed at night.  By the time I can remember it, there were no naps – because I gave them up unreasonably early as far as my mother was concerned. She got even, though; by her own admission, she says I was put to bed “with the chickens”.  I had my own revenge – I lay in there and sang for a long time and I have never been able to carry a tune.

At some time, in the before I can remember time, my dad gave the satin one of his made-up names: it was my “feeler”.  (Iodine, by the way was, “red stuff” and once I remember telling a playmate who had a cut that she needed red stuff . . . and she looked as me as if I were daft and I didn’t know why.)

Since I sucked my left thumb, leaving my right hand free to do things as I went through the day, at night the feeler was always between the fingers on my right hand. However, as I grew older and eventually gave up sucking my thumb, I switched the feeler to my left hand. And somewhere along the line, I discovered a feeler didn’t have to be attached to a blanket – satin was in lots of places. Why ribbons were made of satin; lots of stuff was trimmed with satin. I found myself running my fingers over it all – even the slick thread in the brocade pattern of a chair.

Once, when I was writing for a paper in Cincinnati, I did a story on the ballet and part of the pack of information contained an invitation to a fundraiser, and that invitation was a paper ballet slipper laced with a pink ribbon. As I was going to sleep one night, my husband noticed the pink ribbon laced between my fingers. He made a reference to addiction and said that, yes, the first ribbons they hand out free and then they start to charge. I could see myself committing crimes to get the money for my ribbons and it was a scary thought – and I’d have to go cold turkey if I was caught and jailed. It’s numbers, not ribbons, on prison jumpsuits.

So if I wind up in prison, please, somebody, bake me a cake with a ribbon in it.