How do you verify your humanity?

About this time last year, I found a piece of forgotten Halloween candy on the ground while Ink and I were out for a walk. It is something like a large smartie, and on each side it has a word etched in the surface. One side reads proud and the other humble. Ironically, I was feeling pretty proud of my humility at the time, so I picked it up. I brought it home to add to the shrine of Self I keep on my bedside table. I had a Minecraft zombie up there but Ink knocked him somewhere under the bed when she tried to chew on my stumbling block.¹ I haven’t felt in the mood to lay on the floor to find him. The candy was originally light green but one side has grown some kind of mold and turned an uneven mustard brown. I know I need to throw it away. It’s kind of gross to look at (it gives me the ick as they say). I keep it because the symbolism feels meaningful. Next to the candy and the block stands a happy Buddha that someone at Benihana Headquarters thought was appropriate for alcoholic beverages. My grandmother displayed him along with a couple of Geishas used for the same purpose in the bedroom I slept in when I visited. The Buddha helps me remember a past life. Draped over his arm is a gold bracelet gifted to me by my grandmother’s friend and neighbor, Ms. Hazel.

While I don’t remember the circumstances that led me to spend an afternoon with Ms. Hazel during the week I was visiting my grandparents, I do remember sitting at her dressing table carefully investigating each piece of her jewelry.

Ms. Hazel was a smart lady and sat me down in front of a table top jewelry box and allowed me to look through her large collection. This was probably because it was the only thing in elderly Hazel’s home that six-year-old me would have any interest in, and theres a good chance she was also looking after my toddler brother and needed me to be interested in something. Lucky for her, I was very interested in the jewelry box.

I sat for quite a while opening and closing the drawers and handling each piece of jewelry with care and curiosity. After some time, Hazel told me I could pick any piece I wanted to take home with me. I picked a thin rope chain bracelet. Hazel, who I think was surprised I hadn’t gone for one of the flashier costume pieces with large colorful gems, asked me why I had picked that one. I told her it was the clasp that interested me. The bracelet’s clasp is a small tube the width of the chain that the other end slips inside of in a particular way. It is held in place with pressure and a small metal loop that locks over an even smaller pin. I liked how much intricacy was packed into such a small mechanism. I remember this whole exchange because Hazel seemed charmed by my selection and reasoning. I was not used to that.

I didn’t think about the bracelet again for decades. In recent years, I’ve been rebuilding my sense of self according to my own map instead of the one I created from other people’s expectations (easier said than done, it turns out). A year or so ago when I cleared out my own jewelry box, I came across the bracelet, and for the first time, had the capacity to see myself through Ms. Hazel’s eyes. Remembering her warm reaction helped me as an adult realize my six-year-old self was just a curious child and not a misprint as I so often felt. I very rarely wear jewelry now, but on special occasions I put on that bracelet.

I think a lot about the stories that made me. What if having a story of Ms. Hazel’s kindness toward me as a child kept me from sinking further into the dark as an adult? If she had rejected my choice and told me a girl should choose something pink and sparkly, could I be who I am today? How much of who we think we are is who we’ve been to other people? If Ms. Hazel’s moment of grace can be so meaningful to me decades later, imagine what the devastation of war will mean to the children who’s land is left ruined. Who are we telling the children they are?

We can try to will the world around us into submission through exhaustive self examination and improvement, but we are either flourishing in or recovering from the stories other people write on us when we are very young. Each time we interact with a child we have a choice. We can choose to preserve ourselves and our stories by bending the reality to fit (Ms. Hazel could have made a case for pink sparkles) or we can see the other as a facet of life we have not yet met (a little girl who likes the clasp best). We write on the future when we interact with children. Ms. Hazel treated my fascination like a mystery of the cosmos had been revealed to her. She wanted to know why I thought the way I did and she was open to a surprise. She let me love what I loved without judgement. Ms. Hazel made me feel like part of the universe.

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1. a literal wooden block that I literally stumbled over on a walk one day ↩︎