Tag Archives: charms

Five Security Blankets I Keep In My Wallet

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  1. Two blue green winkle shells from St Simons Island because they are pretty and only cost 50 cents.  They remind me of a place I hold dear.  I’ve had them for a year.
  2. MagpieMy kindergarten school picture.  That was a great year in Mrs. Lemmon’s class…I learned to read, my right from left and how to tie my shoes!  It reminds me of a time that I treasure.  It’s 39 years old.
  3. The deposit slip for my divorce settlement from Fartbuster.  It was so hard to ask for that money as a token reimbursement for the three years I supported him during school.  I spent most of it on travel and there were times I wanted to send him a postcard!  It reminds me to insist on and fight for what I deserve.  It’s been in there for 11 years.
  4. Alphabet letters from a keychain that broke.  My very wise friend goes by the initials HRCFS.  Many of us rely on her counsel so when she left for a while we made keychains that said “WWHRCFSD?” to invoke her good advice.  They make me feel a little smarter.  I’ve carried these beads for a year.
  5. A piece of my nephew’s security blanket, Poppy.  This boy loved his Poppy with a devotion that most of us cannot fathom.  To the rest of the world, Poppy was just an old rubberized sheet.  But to my nephew, Poppy was the safest thing in the world.  He held it to his cheek and sucked his thumb to fall asleep when he was a toddler. His parents lived in fear that Poppy might be lost, so Poppy was divided into sub-Poppies for school, car, washing, etc.  One summer, we were at the beach together and the grownups had stayed up wayyyyy too late talking to Mr. John Liquor.  The next morning, we went out blueberry picking in the stifling heat.  We were all on edge and grumpy.  Someone snapped at someone else and the car got tense.  I turned to my nephew riding in the carseat next to me and said, “Don’t worry about it.  The grownups are not feeling very well today.”  A few seconds later, I feel his little hand tapping on my wrist.  He held up a thin strip of Poppy to me that he had torn off his blanket.  What a kindness!  What generosity! I have carried Poppy in my wallet ever since and that kid is almost a teenager now.  It reminds me that I am loved.

Did you have a security blanket when you were little?  Do you still carry something that grounds you or reminds you that you are loved?  That you are strong?  That you deserve your fair share?  That you are bright and full of promise?  I hope so.

 

The Sugar Dish

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The Sugar Dishtal·is·man  /ˈtalismən/

Noun.  An object, typically an inscribed ring or stone, thought to have magic powers and to bring good luck.  Synonyms: charm, amulet, mascot, phylactery*
 
 

This is the first talisman that I can remember identifying for myself:  a yellow Tupperware creamer that my family used as a sugar dispenser.  My mother noticed this one sitting on my kitchen counter last weekend and asked if it was the one from her house.  “No, I found that one on eBay ” I explained.  I didn’t explain WHY I was on eBay looking for an old Tupperware creamer, now did I?

When I was about 7 or 8, I was already old enough to know that money wasn’t an easy thing for our family.  There were times when there wasn’t enough and that was just the way it was.  One night while my parents were watching the evening news, I heard the anchorman foretelling some shock to the global economy that would send sugar prices sky-rocketing.  SUGAR?  I was old enough to understand that and know its value!  I sidled into the kitchen and opened up the cabinet above the coffee maker.  I took down the sugar dish and checked to make sure that it was full.  It was.  And that meant that we were OK. To this day, I can remember the weight of that full sugar dish in my small hand and the feeling of safety that crept through me.  If sugar was expensive and we had plenty, we were OK.

I can’t remember what knocked that memory of the comforting sugar dish back into place.  When eBay first took off, I took advantage of the opportunity to reclaim lost things from my childhood.  I found an old aluminum cookie cutter shaped like a horse and another shaped like a bunny.  I found a yellow sugar dish all my own.  One Christmas, Fartbuster won me a 1946 edition of The Littlest Angel exactly like the version our Grandmother Eunice read to us when we spent the night with her.  I bought a blue glass slipper like the one she used to hold her bobby pins.

I surrounded myself with things that made me feel safe and loved.  That’s all a talisman is.  There’s not magic inherent in it, only the magic you entrust to it.

What makes you feel safe?  Shake the memory loose then go and find it again.

*  A phylactery is the small leather box containing Hebrew texts on vellum, worn by Jewish men at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law.  I learned a new word today, how about you?

And In the Other Pocket…

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pocket coinsWhile I am thinking about amulets, charms, and talismans this week, let me share the contents of my left coat pocket–22 Euro cents.  I use these coins like worry stones; as I walk along, I rub them between my fingers, passing them one over the other and back again in a circle.  The feel of them in my hand is relaxing and never fails to make me smile.  If I were Greek, I might carry worry beads to calm myself into a meditative state with rhythmic clicking.  If I were Hindu, I might wear a mala on my wrist to count prayers.  Cultures and religions across the globe use prayer beads in one form or another to mark the rhythm of letting go, turning over or sinking in.  We all need something to fiddle with. 

Twenty two cents.  That’s what I had left at the end of my last trip to Europe, the week in Paris on my own.  Richard and I used to play a game at the end of a trip.  We’d try to spend our cash down to the last penny so we weren’t left with any foreign money to take home as souvenirs or god forbid, exchange at Thomas Cook.  I have a thimble from Munich, a bookmark from Prague, a postcard from Amsterdam.  I once spent my last money on a breakfast banana in Berlin then forgot all about it until I was busted by the USDA beagle sniffer dog once we landed in Atlanta!  I’m standing there minding my own business when I look down and the beagle has gone into a sit on the floor next to me and placed her delicate paw right on top of my trusty backpack!  ACK!!  I guess I’ve seen one too many episodes of “Locked Up Abroad.”  I mean, let’s just say…that backpack had done a good bit of living…not “Midnight Express” or anything but y’know.  A very serious customs agent escorted me to a plexiglass cubicle where I was directed to open my luggage and keep my hands in view.  There sat the contraband banana, cleverly concealed on top of everything.  I breathed a sigh of relief and asked, “Does the dog get to keep the banana?”  (The answer is no.)

I was in Europe the very day the Euro became the official currency of the Eurozone.  Shopkeepers grumbled at having to reprice everything and print new signs and they hated seeing us coming with our super-strong dollars (that was way back when!).  The day the currency switched, we were traveling by train to Bruges in Belgium from Delft in the Netherlands, so I kept guilders in my front left pocket, francs in the right, euros in my jacket.  It was New Years Day, so the restaurants and shops where we could have used a debit card were closed.  It’s pretty frustrating to get crisp new euros out of an ATM only to find that the vending machines all still take the old coin.  That explains why we had to make a meal in Ghent of leftover Christmas Hershey bars and two hot Cokes.  Ugly Americans…bringing Hersheys to Belgium!  It was a last resort.  We had mussels and black beer for dinner to atone for the sin. 

You can tell by the smooth edges of these coins that they’ve taken away many a worry for me.  They’re both from France (the RF mark indicates that) and minted in 2005.  I have one phrase that describes that time in my life and I stole it from a New Year’s shop window display in Paris:  “Love 2006, F*ck 2005.”  

But that’s just my two cents!

A Pocket Full of Luck

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It was cold enough to wear a coat today for my short walk from the parking lot to my office.  When I pulled my right hand out of the pocket to press the crossing signal, a scrap of paper fluttered to the ground.  Luckily, I saw it fall.  As I snatched it up from the sidewalk (saying a little thank you that there was no wind), I felt my whole body tighten with panic at the idea that I might have lost my talisman that’s been in that pocket since January 2, 2006.

boarding pass

It’s just a boarding pass stub from an Air France flight from Charles de Gaulle to Atlanta.  Economy class, seat 44G.

I’ve been other places since then and I’ve even shoved other boarding passes into the pocket of that coat.  This one is special because it’s from the trip I took to Paris on my own to cap off the hardest year of my life.  I keep it in my coat pocket to remind myself of who I can be–the woman who will not be defeated by sadness.  The woman who will insist on adventure.

I really do believe that we make our own good luck, so most of my lucky charms are reminders to myself of great days or hard-won victories.  When I decided to spend a week in Paris between Christmas and New Year’s of 2005, I heard a lot of “You’re going to Paris by yourself?”  Yes.  But I made a conscious effort to create the right energy around this trip by saying “I’m going to Paris on my own.”  I hear “abandoned, bereft, left” when I think of “alone.”  I hear “in charge of deciding what to do next” when I say “on my own.”  I had had enough of being alone and was ready to try being on my own. 

Richard and I had a tradition of taking a big adventure trip between Christmas and the New Year.  The first year, we went to Amsterdam and Bruges.  The next year, Salzburg and skiing in Innsbruck then on to Munich.  The next year, the pink sands of Bermuda and snorkeling along coral reefs.  The next year…the hospital.  The next year, I was on my own.  When the fall of 2005 rolled around, I was so full of resentment that I wouldn’t get to go on an adventure that year (or ever again, in the back of my mind).  But eventually it dawned on me that I could go–I would just need to go in a different way so that I would feel safe and could enjoy myself.  I wanted to reclaim ADVENTURE.

I chose Paris because I had been there before right after college and I spoke enough French to get by.  It was also one of the few places in the world that Richard had NOT wanted to go, so I didn’t feel guilty that I was getting to do something and he was missing out.  Instead of staying in the budget hotels that we usually chose, I reserved a room in a nicer hotel, with a concierge who spoke English and a Metro stop a block away.  I thought my way through every point of the planning and I got a little bit excited.  Even if I panicked once I got there and stayed in my hotel room, by god, it was a Parisian hotel!

My daddy drove me to the airport on Christmas night.  Now that I have children of my own, I have some empathy for how he must have felt, dropping his widowed baby girl off at the airport to fly off  by herself.  On her own.  He didn’t say a negative word.  I got to my seat, took the last Valium I had been saving up, set my iPod to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (the version by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole) and went to sleep.

I woke up in Paris.  On my own.  Holy shit.  My heart was pounding and that place behind my eyes was very twinkly.  Under my breath, I chanted the mantra my college professor, Dr. Darlene Mettler had told me about travel:  Be Deliberate.  “Just get your bag.  Get your bag.    OK, now find a cab.  Find a cab.  Find a cab.  Write out the address so you don’t have to pronounce all those vowels….Boulevard Hausmann.”  I got a cab, settled into the backseat.  The driver typed the address into his GPS (which spoke with a very sexy French accent) then turned on the radio.  Guess what was playing?  “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  Yep.  Where bluebirds fly.

I’ll tell the other stories some other day.  I can’t say enough about how important it is for women to travel on their own.  It was a great week.  It wasn’t always a happy week, but it was a great week.

One day, I went to the Rue des Rosiers in the old Jewish Quarter to buy my friend a menorah as a gift.  I had heard about a little Judaica shop called Diasporama.  The name was too clever to pass up, so I ducked inside…hoping that I wouldn’t make a shiksa blunder.  I tried out my French–“Je voudrais un ‘menorah’ pour un cadeux…”  The bustling maternal shopkeeper tutted at me while looking over her reading glasses.  Her daughter came to my aid.  She helped me select an elegant, modernist  menorah in stainless steel and took it to the counter to wrap it up.  While I was waiting, the grandmother seated behind the counter gave me a smile.  I said (in French!) that something she was cooking smelled delicious.  And in the way of grandmothers across the globe, she offered me a bowl of cabbage soup!  I declined and explained that I had just had Moroccan food around the corner.  She waved away the very idea but patted me on the hand.  That simple touch–the first time I had been touched in a week–made my breath stop and I felt myself beginning to cry.  The three of them, there together, being kind to me when I had been so worried about doing or saying something wrong.  I looked for something to distract myself.  A small straw basket of talismans sat by the cash register.  I picked one up and turned it over in my palm.  The Hand of Miriam.

"Hand of Miriam" or Hamsa (Arabic) used to ward off the evil eye.

“Hand of Miriam” or Hamsa used to ward off the evil eye.

It’s a good luck charm.  I learned that if the fingers are spread apart, it is to deflect the evil eye.  If the fingers are depicted together, they catch good luck.  At three euros, I added it to the purchase and bought myself a little extra traveling luck.

When I’m traveling on my own and people ask me if I am alone, I say that my husband is meeting me just around the corner at the hotel or a restaurant or a shop.  During that week, I had said it a couple of times and the lie had left me feeling sometimes bereft and sometimes gleeful because in Paris I didn’t have to stick with my sad story.  But I told these women that I was on my own in Paris.  They welcomed me and congratulated me.  I left that place feeling safer than I had all week.  I had been offered food, a touch, help in choosing a gift and a little good luck.

I love the Hamsa, but it feels like a prop, something I am putting on.  I can’t read the Hebrew inscription and I don’t really worry about the evil eye on your average Monday.  It ended up in my suitcase and I only see it when I am packing for trips. It reminds me of Paris and the woman I let myself be that afternoon in the Rue des Rosiers.

The boarding pass became my everyday good luck charm.  I run it through my fingers as I walk from the parking lot to work to remind myself of the woman who went to Paris on her own.  It’s growing silky and soft with age.  It’s corners are worn smooth.