Blankets keep us warm when the cold winds blow.  Wool ones stay warm in the rain and snow.  You can sit on them to have tea parties and picnics, or fold them up for a cushion.  Perhaps their versatility and flexibility are part of the reason we use them to make relationships in Native American traditions.  Wrapping your son or daughter in a blanket at night helps them to feel loved and cared for even when you are gone.  They can wrap the blanket around them and remember.  So can a sister’s or mother’s gift of a blanket remind you of them and all the times, good and bad, you spent together.  Grandmother and grandfathers gift us blankets in times of transition to remember that time in our lives, they are markers.  And the energy of those blankets travels with us as well.

For Fathers Day in 2001 I wrapped…