Circle Time: The Show and Tell Weekly Thread

Welcome back to Show and Tell. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. In fact, we hope you do go back to your blog and post your own Show and Tell item and then return with the link to your post. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

I showed these pictures last week, but I couldn’t tell the story until today when my sister got the japa mala beads. This is the story of what you’re seeing.

A few weeks ago, we were in New Jersey in the town where Elizabeth and Felipe live (from Eat, Pray, Love). This town, is the epicenter of my location casualty. If the entirety of Bucks County is a location casualty, their town is quite literally the heart of darkness. One night, my MIL asks me if I want to go to their store and meet them and I tell her “no” because I literally don’t think I can bring myself to enter this town.

But the next day, it is nagging on me. It’s nagging and nagging on me because I have this amazingly strong feeling that I get every once in a while–most notably of winning-front-seats-to-Rent fame. And this feeling told me that there was something in that store that my sister needed for her upcoming trip to Bali.

What can I do? I agreed to go.

When we got to their store, Felipe was outside and he immediately greeted us, offered the twins lollipops and Josh a glass of wine and offered to give me a ride on one of their becaks (an Indonesian tricycle-like taxi). I got aboard with the twins and off we rode down the road. And I started crying, mostly because the feeling that I had was beating me internally at a deafening level and this was mixed with the idea that I had willingly traveled into this town I had never wanted to step foot in again. Isn’t it crazy what we’ll do to silence our own internal monologue?

Elizabeth wasn’t in that day. Felipe entertained the twins and gave the ChickieNob and I matching flower rings and the Wolvog a few foreign coins. He asked me what I was looking for and I told him I was there to satiate a feeling. There was something in the store meant for my sister and I would know it when I saw it. He told me to look.

The ChickieNob took my hand and helped me hunt. She pointed out statues and jewelry, but none of it felt right. I looked at clothing and ornaments and a few things felt close, but none were clicking as the thing I was looking for. It was getting late and we needed to get the twins fed. I was going to give up and buy her a ring that was beautiful, though it didn’t feel like the right item at all.

And for no reason whatsoever, I lifted the tablecloth where I was standing and underneath the table was a basket of japa mala beads. The internal thumping ceased when I picked up one of the strands and I said, “this is what I came for.” And Felipe said, “then you should go ahead and buy it.” And suddenly, I knew I had to own the same japa mala beads in the same size and I took a second strand from the basket.

And if you want to get even stranger than that, I had the strongest feeling as I walked to the cash register that I should change the mantra I have used for meditation for almost twenty years when I start using this new strand of beads and change it to a different phrase that just popped into my mind at that moment. And that is when everything settled.

I asked Felipe if he would write a note to my sister to slip into the bag, something about good wishes for her trip to Bali. So he did, and I placed it inside the bag with the beads. And that is the story of the pictures, my new mantra, and the coincidental tie-in to Eat, Pray, Love during the week that we read it for Barren Bitches.

Heather J got the closest guess, therefore, I am declaring her the winner. Luckily, she lives nearby so I get to give her the prize at the next TOOTPU gathering (The Order of the Plastic Uterus for those who live outside the DC area). Which is another way of saying that I get to grab an extra week or two to come up with something fabulous.

What are you showing today?

Want to bring something to Show and Tell?

• If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can’t do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything–a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn’t need to contain a picture if you can’t get a picture–you can simply tell a story about a single item.
• Label your post “Show and Tell” each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don’t just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I post a new Show and Tell post every Saturday night or Sunday. I usually move people up into the body of the post every few hours.
• Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.
• If you want it…
  I’ve now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.