Once upon a time as I was transitioning from college graduate to burgeoning Peace Corps Volunteer (I had a mere 10 days between the two events) my life was up in the air. My days were full of bags and boxes. Trying to fit 2 years of must-haves into 2 duffle bags and packing the rest away for a future that would hold I knew not what.
My senior year of college I had found my way to some vision of god again. My mother was there. I shared with her my fascination with the rituals, learning stories that seemed to fit like old jeans. Things that made sense. I had started practicing yoga for its physical pleasure and it led me places.
As I scurried around the house feeling uprooted and nervous my mother called me into her bedroom. We had been having lots of little moments, emotional bits and pieces bursting out, preparing to separate for a long stretch. I came into her bedroom where she was standing at her dresser holding a cuff bracelet. On the bracelet was the mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum” a Buddhist and sometimes Hindu chant. She had found the bracelet on ebay, the inside was etched with a Chinese dragon. She put the bracelet on my wrist and with a funny expression on her face said, “Don’t ever leave the house without it.”
I took her words, then, to be more about the emotion of our separation. But I also took them literally. This was a part of her and her love for me that I took with me. Something that I could hold and look at when we were continents apart. I have worn it fastidiously for 5 years now.
A few weeks ago a ring of mine from around that same time broke. The ring also bore the mantra of the bracelet. I told my mother about my efforts to keep it together with superglue and other things but that I knew it was kaput. I had thoughts about running down to the local Tibetan shop and picking up a new ring. I was so accustomed to its presence on my finger. Then I thought about the implications of placing such a symbolic object so quickly. The materialism of it bothered me and I have been waiting to see how best to resolve the loss of this ring.
In a completely unrelated conversation Mom told me to keep my eye out for a package in the mail. That she would be disturbed if it didn’t arrive. Given the context of our conversation that day I anticipated frozen meat or something like that (like I said, completely unrelated conversation!)
Today the package arrived and I was quite confused again. It was a flat rate envelope, thickly padded. I slit it open and pulled out the contents. A heavy silver cuff with our mantra. I stared at this very pretty bracelet, so new and shiny and unlike the worn one that adorns my wrist everyday. I didn’t understand. But it seemed right. When my ring cracked and broke I began to have feelings of sadness that my bracelet would one day, probably soon, befall the same fate. When you wear something with an open back (like an adjustable ring or bracelet) every day it bends back and forth a lot. I started thinking about my bracelet meeting that same fate and could not really imagine it. I promised myself to be more mindful of how I treat my bracelet so that when the time came, I wouldn’t need it anymore.
And then I got a new bracelet in the mail. From my mother. Who had misunderstood. When I told her about my ring she mixed it up. She thought I meant the bracelet had broken. She had given it to me. She knew what it meant to me. She wanted me to still have it. The same blessing, the same wish is in the new bracelet as in the old. It is beautiful and I am so grateful for it. As I put it on my need to replace the ring disappeared. And I picked up the phone to call home.
