From Forgotten Memories to Hope

Halloween is around the corner.  Okay it’s tomorrow, and tonight I was without a good idea for a costume.  I don’t usually dress up since I’m always too busy rushing home from a crazy day with students dressed up for Halloween and hyped up on candy to feed my own kids and get them into their costumes and headed out to get them hyped up on candy.  This year, though, is different.  We’re staying in.  Thanks Covid.  We’re not at school.  Thanks again Covid. (Okay it’s Saturday, but still, the school thing is mostly Covid’s fault).  And my kids need Halloween to be super special because, well, Covid.  So, to join in the fun and make this year special, I’m dressing up at home with them.  The only problem is I don’t have a suitable costume.  Whoever made the 1920’s flapper dress I got at the costume store seemed to miss that lesson in history class, or fashion history class I guess, that taught about the 1920’s being a time of straight silhouettes and loose fitting clothes.  It should be the right size, and it would be, except it fails to hide the belly pooch that my three pregnancies gave me.  Thus making me feel less of a warrior mama for carrying those boys, and more like a woman who is so obviously past her prime.  So, I dove into my closet looking for last year’s diner-girl jacket and came up empty there too.  It is nowhere to be found.  What I did find however, is priceless.  My high school letterman’s jacket.  Jackpot!  I’ll throw that baby on, some jeans, mauve lipstick, and a pair of my mom’s doc martens (she loves them, coolest 60-something lady you’ll meet), maybe a scrunchie, and I’m set.  Fortunately I can find all of these things easily.  Lastly, I dove into my old jewelry box, which was also hiding in the closet, to find some old earrings or a choker from my high school days.  While I rifled through, I found many treasures and memories, but the most interesting item I came across was interesting not only for what it was, but because I couldn’t remember why in the world I had it. 

The item that gave me pause was a small woven bag of even smaller hand-made woven dolls.  My first thought, besides knowing instinctively that they were from a visit to Mexico, was “why in the hell do I have a tiny bag of tiny voo-doo dolls?” My second thought was, “don’t be an idiot, you wouldn’t take something like this home with you unless it was significant in some way.”  My brain worked double-time trying to remember anything about this unusual item.  I did feel like a woman had told me what they were. I had a feeling it had something to do with good luck or something getting better.  But that is where it all went blank.  

The dolls are at least twenty years old, since the last time I was in Mexico and went to a market was a trip to Nogales with my mom and one of my best friends when I was nineteen.  I remember going to the market on that trip.  I remember buying a blanket that I only let go of recently.  I also remember buying a bracelet.  It was a bracelet that I originally stopped to look at because the seller kept calling over the “girl with the pretty eyes.”  That was me.  There was more than one vendor in the market who seemed simply amazed that someone with such dark hair would have eyes as blue and as light as mine.  I must have appeared a modern version of Snow White to them, since I had recently dyed my hair a shade darker than it’s normal dark brown.  I’m not really sure why it was such a big deal or why it garnered such attention, but every time I was reached out to, I stuck by my mom just a little more closely.

The other trip they may have journeyed back from is one made to Cozumel during a cruise we took as a family when I was fifteen.  I don’t remember very much about our time there at this point except using what Spanish I had to help us find something to drink, and riding in a taxi to the beach.  I asked my mom and she said there was some shopping done, because she bought a bunch of t-shirts and I wouldn’t be surprised if she brought back one of her Mexican sunshine pieces that now hang in a collection on the back of the house near the deck.  Any memory of bringing those little dolls home on this trip is lost to the so-called “sands-of-time” to use a horrible, but appropriate, cliche.  (My sophomore english teacher would cringe if she read that.  I’m sorry Mrs. Brinkman.)  There is one clue that might make me believe that I did bring the dolls home on this trip though, and that clue lies in what I discovered they actually were.

The dolls may have traveled home with me over twenty years ago, but there is one thing we have now that we did not have back then. Google. So, I googled it. I looked up "tiny Mexican dolls in a bag." This is what came up, and a small moment in time peeked out from the darkness of my forgotten memories: "Worry dolls (also called trouble dolls) are small hand-made dolls that originate from Guatemala. According to legend, Guatemalan children tell their worries to the Worry Dolls, placing them under their pillow when they go to bed at night."

I had brought these dolls home with me both to honor a cultural tradition of a place I found endearing, but also because I had a lot of worries.  These were worries that would not be quiet, worries that gave me stomach aches, and worries that kept me from sleeping.  My freshman year of high school had been one for the record books.  I had suffered through a time of anxiety of which I thought I might never see the end.  It didn’t help that I happened to be taking health class at the time and we were studying mental health disorders.  I went home one day in tears absolutely terrified that I had schizophrenia.  I didn’t.  Or bipolar disorder.  I didn’t.  What I did have was a really good case of sensitive-soul-meets-too-many-changes-and-obstacles-all-at-once.  So, hello anxiety.  For a reason that is too complicated to explain, my body went into fright mode any time I was anywhere but home.  I had to go to school, but was rarely comfortable in my skin there.  I wouldn’t do much else.  I couldn’t sleep in my room because I wanted to go to sleep with the tv on, or have it near if I woke up.  Late night reruns of old tv shows like I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, and The Dick VanDyke Show comforted me, just like when I was little and would stay home sick and watch the same kind of line up as an elementary schooler.  I don’t actually like these shows much any more, since they remind me of this time in my life.  I also missed out on a Spring Break trip to Arizona that year because I just could not get on a plane and travel across state lines.  Honestly, as a parent now, I can’t even imagine the patience and prayer it took for my parents to get me through this time in my life.  

Summer came and I had braved most of the storm, having been given some tools by a therapist for those times when I started to feel those frightful out-of-body moments.  Panic disassociation can be downright disturbing.  I still get it sometimes, but having tools helps.  It also helps having the adult mind-frame that if I can’t control an attack I have people around me who truly care, because I know that no one wishes me ill.  A teenage mind can’t fully comprehend a safe-space in their egocentric world.  Summer brought one more challenge, and it would end up being one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life.  We were booked on a Caribbean cruise to Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel.  I was going to have to get on a plane.  I was going to have to stay a night in Miami.  I was going to have to get on a ship and sail away from a shoreline.  The only thing I could do was get out my tool-kit and use the one tool that would work.  I took it all one moment, one second, at a time.  I breathed it in.  Sometimes the air smelled like stale airplane air, sometimes it smelled like a fresh Caribbean breeze.  It was in that Caribbean breeze, in the humid sun-warmed moments, that I found freedom.  I found a way to exist in spite of my fear, in spite of what my body and mind wanted me to believe about the moment in time that I was living.  I also saw a way of life that reminded me of the privilege I had in mine.  My sister and I did not sell candy by the road to anyone who would buy some.  We didn’t live in a lean-to shack on the outskirts of a tourist laden town.  We didn’t climb banana trees to the delight of those paying to “see how it’s done.”  How could I continue to be scared of my life, when others who have so much less  live the fullest of theirs?  

Because these memories call themselves into existence as I hold these miniscule dolls in my hand, I know that there is a strong likelihood that they came home with me on this trip.  It would make sense that a young girl, grasping for any way to lessen the worries she carries at the end of a day, would find meaning in an old woman describing the way the dolls work to take away such worries.  I don’t know how I managed to find them, or maybe they found me, but however it happened it must have brought me great comfort at the time.  Perhaps they came home with me on the next trip, as anxiety is something that can happen at any age and has become a visitor to me at different times in my life, but however it happened, there may be a reason I found them again.  

This year, at first glance, is the worst of my life.  I think many people would agree.  For me, let’s make a list.  Difficult classroom, check.  Pandemic, check.  Husband has a meltdown, check. Husband officially gets his own place, check. Divorce a likelihood, check. I’m turning 40, check.  Pandemic, check. Oh, I already did that one?  Well, it's still happening check and check.  The unknown and new is hitting me over the head at an unreal pace.  The needs of my children, the needs of my students, the demands of my job, my coworkers, all leave me feeling pulled in too many directions at once.  It’s all I can do to use my tools to focus on one thing at a time, which often means that something gets overlooked because I can’t keep it all in my brain at the same time.  Cue fright mode.  Hello familiar attack.  Hello shallow breathing and that odd floaty feeling.  Here comes the need to sob, or be carried away by it all.  That is my new coping mechanism.  I find that if I let the emotion wash over me, it leaves me with clarity and focus and a drive to get up and start again.  But it would be nice to do less of this cycle and more sleeping.  I think for that I’ll turn to my found-again Mexican worry dolls.  I don’t think I’ll put them under my pillow, and I may not even tell them my worries, but I will use them as my inspiration.  They will be my inspiration to get out my journal at the end of the day.  They will inspire me to talk to God as I drift off to sleep at less ungodly hours.  They will inspire me to remember the tropical breeze and that things are not always what they seem.  Each thing on the above list that makes 2020 worthy of being flushed down the toilet and never spoken of again, has a flip side.  A flip side of hope that starts with change, that starts with reflection. It starts with taking each moment a second at a time, realizing the privilege I have in the midst of the chaos, and remembering to tell my worries to someone who cares.