Grandpa’s worry beads. . . . 

Many years ago when I was a teenager my grandfather gave me his “worry beads”.  I can’t remember the exact circumstance – it might have been when my parents were divorcing and my grandparents were worried about my brother and I.  In any event, he passed them along to me.  I have taken them with me throughout my many travels and moves across the East Coast.  Not knowingly.  They just were in my jewelry box, which has always been an appendage of sorts.

The beads were strung on a red very frayed silk string and were a mixture of gold, brown, and green plastic beads.  I actually have no idea where he got them or why they were “worry beads”.  Now I really, really wish I had asked instead of just taking them, probably rolling my eyes and putting them away.

About 10 years ago I had a very strange and inexplicable health issue.  Together with this, I experienced extreme panic attacks.  I was basically on high alert all the time. Anyone who has anxiety knows what I mean when I say “high alert”.  This persisted 24/7.  Always a low level of buzzing tension and then, at any given moment, it would rear up whether I was awake, asleep, talking, driving, working – you name it. I was riddled with it.  A sense of disconnection was unleashed and I felt tethered to nothing.   As if I was floating outside myself and couldn’t find a way back in.  Anxiety is truly debilitating and, in my opinion, is very possibly worse than any other feeling you could possibly muster up.  Including physical pain.

As I have thought about this period of time, I realize that this is very likely the singular event that triggered a “resurgence” of the anxiety disorder that I never knew I had.  Although I had no idea I was doing it, somehow I had been able to keep this at bay my whole life. In my mind, I was just cruising along with my life in the only way I knew.  Often with a nagging “sense of impending doom”.  This is what I called the sensation I had when I was most stressed out. I now know that this was really just anxiety.  But by calling it my “special power’” I pushed through, chalked it up to my “extraordinary 6th sense”, and waited for the disaster to strike.  It rarely did of course but this was the skill I had developed to calm myself down.  Whatever I “sensed” was going to happen would be bad and it was out of my control so I just covered my head, sucked it up, and moved along.

When you consider it, this is actually a very creative way of dealing, or not dealing, with distress and anxiety.  Maybe I should teach it as a life skill.  Course Name:  “Overcoming Fear with a Practiced Sense of Impending Doom”.  The problem with this is that you aren’t being true to your self or acknowledging who you are.  In fact, you are doing exactly the opposite.  The outside world wants us to assimilate into their expectation of who we should be and what feelings are appropriate.  I was accomodating the world and letting it judge me into suppressing the true sense of who I am.  However dysfunctional it may be.  Probably not a life skill worth teaching.

But I digress.  When this all cropped up 10 years ago, I began to see a therapist.  She is, without question, the best therapist alive. I’ll call her Athena, as in goddess. The day she retired was truly a day of mourning for me.  She expertly and painstakingly helped me sort through what was making me so anxious. Ultimately, we figured it out and, for a moment it felt great.  But then the moment passed and I was left with this: “OK. So now I know why I am reacting this way to certain “triggers” but really…..so what?  I don’t need to learn about “the why” in a million different ways.  Just one – one really shitty “why” was surely enough.  Instead what I needed was to learn what to do now to help myself cope.  And boy did she have some kick-ass coping skills.

One of the many, many skills or, to use the cool therapist term “tools”, my therapist gave me was this.  Keep something material to roll around in your fingers and play with.  The movement and focus on what you are touching, how it feels, what it smells like, and so on, can truly help you keep anxiety in check.  As she suggested this as a way to – as my son would say Calm the Fuck Down, Grandpa’s worry beads immediately came to my mind.  Amazingly, after maybe 30 years of forgetting all about them, I managed to find them in a little pouch in my jewelry box. As soon as they dropped into my palm I felt, crazy as it sounds, connected. Tethered.  Grounded.  And I understood what my perfect therapist meant.  Plus there was a little something else about them.

I never put them down, keeping them with me at all times. In a pocket.  On a chain around my neck or my wrist.  Clenched in my hand.  In my bag.  They were always within reach.

Then a few very strange things happened.

It was about this time that we figured that our kids were at an age – all 3 of them – that would work for a Disney visit.  We are not Disney people so early on we decided to wait until the oldest could stomach it and the youngest would recognize the characters for our one and only Disney trip. This was the year. It had been planned for a long time. After the onset of this medical issue, and to call a spade a spade, my fucked up freak out.  I lost my shit.  Could NOT imagine getting on a plane, leaving our home, trying to be “normal”.  There was no way in hell that I was going to be a Disney mommy, greeting every character with a smile who said “Welcome Home” as we passed through the hotel doors. Worry beads or no worry beads. But since my children were so excited I just couldn’t disappoint them.  So after much support and a little push off we went.

We were in Manchester Airport bright and early to catch our plane.  We had time so we went to the restaurant to grab some breakfast.  As always, my worry beads were clasped in my hand.  After we ate we boarded the plane.  As I was belting in my kids and then myself I realized that my beads were gone.  I searched through everything.  Pockets, bags, kids’ pockets, purses, the floor, under seats, etc.  They were nowhere to be found.  As I was freaking out, my husband, God bless him, said maybe they are on the table at the restaurant.  We were about to take off but he told the attendant it was an emergency and ran off to check.  A few minutes later, in he walked carrying the worry beads.  I had left them on the table.  They had cleaned the table but picked them up and still had them when he turned up.  I will always be so grateful to him for risking the plane leaving without him.  So, despite my losing site of them the worry beads came back and helped carry me through the joys of Disney……

This anxiety kept up for a long, long time.  About 6 months later, I went to visit my best friend, MJ, in West Virginia.  I was still in the midst of this and naturally took my worry beads along.  We stayed at the Greenbrier, a beautiful and vast campus-like resort a couple of hours from her house.  Now first I should say that just being with MJ is like a balm to my soul.      At any time – not just times of anxiety or worry.  So the trip was perfect just for the simple nearness of her.

We had a wonderful stay, doing only what we wanted to do.  Which was a lot of nothing but talking and being together.  As we were checking out I, once again, looked for my worry beads and couldn’t find them.  Anywhere.  We retraced our steps.  All of them.  Each one we took over the 3-day weekend.  I was basically crying to the registration desk attendant, begging her to help.  Although she clearly thought I was crazy.  After all, these are plastic beads on a string.  Nonetheless, she tried.  She really did.  Of course, MJ tried. She really did.  She was as scared as I was. They had cleaned our room already and nothing was found.  All of a sudden the attendant said “You know there is a lost and found box that the maids put stuff in.  They are unlikely to be there since it’s rarely used and the cleaners just finished having found nothing. But let me see if I can find it.”  Meanwhile, time was marching on and I had a plane to catch.  About 5 minutes later she came back with a small plastic box.  Deep inside the box was a baggie with the worry beads in it.  MJ and I were both hysterical.  We could NOT believe it.  Again, they came back to me.

There are a few other examples of this but these are the best ones.  The upshot of course is that I am meant to have the beads when I need them.  Maybe always.  By all odds, they should be long gone.  The string has been changed out several times because of wear and tear.  They have traveled near and far with me.  There are stretches of time when they stay in my jewelry box.  Eventually, though they land in my palm with just the right sense of grounding.

Some will scoff at this and say that they are a crutch.  And maybe they are.  But I don’t care.  They help me.  They provide me with something indescribable.  Something grounding.  Maybe they are just a distraction.  But maybe not.  All Iknow is that they have always come back to me.  Always.

Thanks, Grandpa.  For being who you are to me.  For knowing what I would need long before I would figure it out. I love you.