Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Transmission

It was just one of those kind of mornings.

Waking a bit groggy and sullen. No particular reason, though in hindsight she realized that the size of the moon had its influence on her personal body of water. Hormones surging. That a dose of evening primrose oil would have softened her edge.

But she wasn’t thinking self-care or solutions as she readied herself to drive her husband to the neighbor’s farm. She was only feeling agitation in the kitchen as a case was built for how the day was simply going wrong.

No clean spoons. They were out of milk. The bathroom sink was clogging. Even the tune her husband quietly whistled seemed mocking. An insult to her injury, the notes emanating from his happy throat she used to chastise herself for being anything but cheery.

It was a downward spiral. A world perceived through a lens of negativity. She could feel her husband patiently provide a wider berth, which only served to annoy her further. There were whispers from the far recesses of her mind, cautioning that she was in a state void of reason. Yet, she felt unable to reverse the pessimistic pull.

Once enclosed within the confines of the truck cab, they drove quietly, her moodiness magnified, though her husband smiled, unaffected. She knew she should speak little in her self-imposed state, but logic left her by the second curve in the road.

It was something outlandish. Maybe it was the way he tied the lace of his boot that suddenly signaled to her an immediate need to discuss all things relationship. Who cared that they were five minutes from their destination. That he was readying for a morning of chain saw work in the jungle. They needed a heart-to-heart now. Her eyes filled with emotional tears.  They were the moonbeam version of which, only a woman knows. She knew it too, but could not stop herself.

Her spouse was kind but clear. They couldn’t talk about it now. Later, yes. But now, no.

And with that, they approached that big hill. The one on which she always shifted their automatic into second gear, so as to make the climbing easier. Swirling in emotion, her hand reached for the gear shift. The wheels began the incline, her hand moved the gear, the truck came to an immediate halt as the heavy sound of unhappy metal churned from beneath the hood.

She heard the word “Damn!” come from her mouth.

The truck was stopped. Her husband, still calm beside her. They stayed there paused on the sloping hill.

How had her hand mistaken reverse for second gear?

Stalled, the truck still idling, all debris of melancholy, dirty spoons, clogged drains and workboot shoelaces disappeared.

“Did I just break my car?”

“I don’t think so.” He sat there without a trace of judgement as she silently scolded herself for being so careless.

Slowly, she put the truck in drive, testing. The vehicle began moving forward up the hill, as normal. Carefully, she accelerated, listening for any sound of mechanical malfunction.  All seemed fine, but she was still uncertain.

“I mean, what damage can be done by putting your car in reverse while it’s driving? I can’t believe I did that. I’m afraid I may have just ruined it.”

She heard him with the slightest smile. “Well, just don’t do it that often.”

photo courtesy of Brilliant Michael
photo courtesy of Brilliant Michael
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

Security Blankets and Mala Beads

I kept my “security blanket” until the age of twenty-one.

There, it’s been publicly announced, though for the first quarter of my life, it was something only those closest to me knew.

Gifted to me at birth, my fingers would glide along the edges of that pastel, crocheted blanket (which eventually became a knotted, over-loved ball of unraveling, grey yarn). Round and round the perimeter my hand would inch, soothing me with every fingered movement.

I wasn’t exactly a Linus. No dragging about of the blanket (though I had a brief stint of stress in second-grade that had me stashing it in a book bag, where I would reach to feel it beneath my school desk). Typically, the blanket stayed tucked beneath my pillow, only pulled out at night before sleep.

As I aged, I wondered at my unwillingness to let go of my attachment, and the ritual of comfort it gave me. And though I thought I ‘should’ release it, I resigned to the fact that I simply never would.

One month after my twenty-first birthday, Life made a decision for me. My blanket was stolen at a Rainbow Gathering on Mt. Shasta by an unscrupulous Sicilian hippie named “Many Rivers”. He abandoned it at a collective burn pile where it smoldered with the discarded tie-dye’s of the vacated campers. Only ashes left, an offering, in my involuntary rite of passage.

courtesy of Wikipedia
Rainbow Gathering signage – photo courtesy of Wikipedia

When, much later in life, a mala bead necklace was placed in my hands, the familiar tracing of form through fingers came back to me as a long-lost friend. The calm of movement threading through my thumb and middle knuckle.

So then I wondered. Perhaps I was not a maladjusted, insecure child that grew up to be a young woman, so needy and attached that she could not give up her blankie. Maybe – who knows, maybe – there was some innate remembrance from birth. Perhaps a past life. Had I once been a kneeling Catholic, whispering Hail Mary’s in the church of my small Italian village? Or a monk, cross-legged, in a monastery, chanting in the remote hills of Tibet?

These grown-ups – the devout, the saints, the mystics – they have had their beads in hand for comfort.

The children – they have gotten stuffed animals and blankets.

Perhaps there is a common thread.

For me, the feeling of the texture running through my fingers is what set me at ease. My home base. My calm. Some kind of connection.

These tokens we hold. Maybe they all bear an essence of Home. Offer a settling, a security. One not seen, but touched.

2013-03-01mala_blanket

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 5 Comments

Chicken or the Egg

I should not be here. I should be sleeping in bed.

And though, the truth is, I am, technically, in bed, I am not yet resting. I am typing, instead. Watching my mind mull over which comes first, the chicken or the egg.File:Hatching

It was last Saturday evening, when the Bohemian, Jeb and I, found ourselves at Mary’s house for an outdoor dinner party. The winds were up and Jeb and the Bohemian had launched a kite out in the field at sunset.

The weather was certainly not what would be deemed “cold”. In fact the Oregonians that were present, made laughing comments about the islanders that were bundling up against the gusts. They could laugh all they liked, I was feeling under-dressed in jeans, boots and a sweater. I borrowed a scarf from Mary. Put on my jean jacket.

Still, around 6pm, I could feel something coming on. Every whip of the wind agitated me to the core. I began to feel uncomfortable in my skin. It was something like cat hair beginning to itch at the back of my throat. Everything in me just wanted to go home to bed.

It’s taken nearly forty years to know my body’s signals. This one I knew. I was on the edge of getting sick. And, unfortunately, half of the dinner party had not yet arrived, and had called to say they were about an hour delayed. This was going to be a long night.

I came to the Bohemian as he straightened the string on the fallen kite, ready to launch it again.

“You know, I feel funny. Like I think I’m on the verge of getting sick.”

“Really?”

He got the last tangle out, then backed up as I took the kite in my hands.

“Yeah. I mean, if I were to be honest, I’d just like to go home, take a warm shower and get in bed. But I feel like I should stay here for the dinner.”

As my words swirled with the wind, I was acutely aware.

You know, sometimes, we are not aware.   We just push ourselves beyond what our physical bodies would like, but we don’t even know we’re doing it. Then, all of a sudden, there we are in the aftermath, sick in bed, as if it had come out of nowhere.

This was different. As I held the kite in my hand and the Bohemian pulled back, lifting it into the wind, I was quite conscious that I was at a crossroads.

Pulling in one direction was the prompting from every cell of my body, that it needed to be out of the elements and resting. Tugging the other way was my mind, rationalizing that I needed to stay at the party and fulfill my social obligation. That I could rise above and actually enjoy myself, if I just got over this inclination of needing/wanting to go home.

The kite airborne, the Bohemian staked the string, and joined me in a small shelter from the wind. I chose to stay at the party, but sensed I was taking a risk that would only reveal the consequences in time.

The rest of the invitees eventually arrived. We had great food and I made some deep connections with old friends. It felt good that I had stayed.

So, it was about 3am, back in the comfort of home, when I rose from bed with a terrible sore throat. It hurt to swallow, my head full and sore behind my eyebrows. I knew this feeling. And as I searched the medicine drawer in the dark for some throat spray, I felt a mix of I-told-you-so and disappointment.

Righteous and vindicated, in some twisted way, that I had indeed sensed I was getting sick at the party. Disappointed that I had not followed my instincts.

And then, this lingering question. If our thoughts shape our reality, did thinking that I was getting sick, actually make it so?

Was there a moment that night with the kite, the wind and my fear, when I simply wrote the story that I was getting sick? Did I believe my tale so completely that it happened?

Or was I “truly” getting sick and had the intuition?

Which came first? The sickness or the story?

And if I would have come home that night, honoring body over mind, would I have averted a sore throat?

For three days now, I’ve been powering through. Working, mothering, wifing (is that a verb?) all the while ingesting noni, turmeric, ginger, Echinacea, garlic and miso soup. I haven’t been able to shake this little bug. So, today, I am in bed (albeit, typing) with a new story: health in body and mind.

I haven’t pondered the age-old question of the chicken and the egg in quite a while. Has it ever been scientifically answered?

In my little metaphor of sickness and story, would the chicken be the sickness and the story be the egg?

I’m curious to hear the thoughts of any readers out there, as at this point, I think my egg is scrambled.

Here’s to health (and guiding intuition)!