All that glitters (L2.14)

Lavinia had really never thought about what people called lucky charms. She didn’t believe in luck, for starters. Now chance or randomness which might result in a positive outcome or event was something else. (She tried not to think about Jung and synchronicity. That did unnerve her, even though she attributed synchronic happenings to having a word or an idea in her head which made her more aware of the occurrence of similar phenomena. 

Like when the same odd geographical location pops up in two places at once. Or when something on television has the same words as the book a person is reading. Very uncanny, but Lavinia wasn’t ready to attribute a theory to why those coincidences occurred. The shiver she occasionally felt running up and down her spine was nothing more than surprise at those incidents.

The word charm was whimsical, perhaps a bit childish. She equated it with trinket, a small object of no monetary value. Girls, and some women, wore them on bracelets and sometimes collected them. Lavinia imagined many of the wearers doubted the efficacy of the often inexpensive, small objects, but they still tried to conjure up a tiny belief in their ability to achieve a good outcome to their endeavors. 

It was about hope, when all was said and done.

Some people did expand the concept of lucky charm to a larger object such as a garment. A specific color might be responsible for part of its power. A certain shirt, cap, or even a person could eventually come to be linked to good luck. Maybe the article of clothing had a logo for a team. Athletes and the fans of sports teams certainly had beliefs like that, but they weren’t alone. Again, this wasn’t really about luck.

Still and all, Lavinia recognized that there were a few - a precious few - items that she might possibly be willing to consider lucky. Since that belief often fell short, she usually ended up thinking of the objects as comforting. They calmed her or boosted her confidence. There was no luck involved, she thought.

In a couple of instances, the items gave her the sense that she was loved, and perhaps protected. She never lost sight of the objects as ones consciously chosen by her to fulfill that function. Her feelings were not irrational. She did not believe in magic, either.

In Galicia, however, Lavinia had encountered different objects and beliefs. That did not mean it was a superstitious place, just a complex one, with more than a bit of mystery in the eyes of those not born there.

For example, it might be noted that in Galicia, as in many other cultures, the Figa was well-known. It had different functions, and was considered to be capable of both protecting and insulting. Its origin wasn’t clearly identified and figas could be made of a variety of materials. Often these materials were silver, ivory, or jet. There were large figas made of ceramic like the ones of Sargadelos. Those were wall decorations.

The figa had become a bit kitsch because of tourism and its promoters. It was overdone, seen in every souvenir shop along with miniature bruxas ou meigas.

Amulets and talismans come to mind when thinking about figas, which are probably a subset. So does the touch piece, which is really not much more than a coin, often bent. Laying on of the hands is an entirely different thing, but Lavinia thought she had read somewhere that the word figa had a Germanic root that meant hand. She had also a vague recollection that it was related to ficus, the fig tree, and from there pointed to more vulgar connotations.

Did everything have to point in a similar direction? After all, the word was of uncertain gender; it might have belonged to either the second or the fourth declension declension, meaning its gender was uncertain. That was preferable. Lavinia mused:

“If I lost my lucky charm, I would use an alternate form. Sooner or later the original would turn up again.” She was not taking such an item seriously.

Then she recalled her baby ring. Mostly she knew about the ring from a photograph taken on her first birthday. It had been done professionally and the slender gold band had been readily visible on a chubby little finger. Soon it no longer fit and was put in a safe place by her mother, who would often point to the blue-patterned dish in the china cabinet where it had been for years. It might not be lucky, but it had immense sentimental value.

Nobody back then seemed concerned that a baby or toddler might swallow it. Baby rings don’t seem to be a thing anymore. One less family heirloom…

Years passed, but Lavinia’s little ring never left its place of safekeeping. Until other eyes wanted the gold it contained. The ring bore her initial, was hers, but it might have had a selling price of… twenty-five dollars? Greedy hands would not dismiss this fact. No matter; other hands found it and it was lost in the town where Lavinia had grown up. Lost, because it was no longer in the blue dish.

Then somehow it reappeared and was recovered by the original owner, still in the same town but maybe in a place in the house where it had been hidden. How this happened was a mystery.

Recovered in another state, from a box of trinkets and other things of sentimental value that had been retrieved from the family home, the ring was placed on a keychain. From the keychain, it vanished. Lavinia was frantic. Then once more she located it in a lost-and-found, only to have it disappear again immediately, within the hour. 

It was a struggle to accept the loss, to overcome the guilt at the carelessness that had been the cause of the little ring’s disappearance. Lavinia was powerless. It was finally gone.

Then another gold band, one just like the first, appeared. Not in a parking lot or on the linoleum of a supermarket floor: out of thin air it materialized, and Lavinia was afraid. This was not a lucky charm; it felt like the tiny gold circle was stalking her. She saw a letter engraved in the metal, but was afraid to look closely. Afraid it was not an L, but a D or a K, or anything that indicated it couldn’t be her lost baby item. That one had fallen off the keychain in a vast parking lot and three trips back to the exact spot had been fruitless.

Still and all, there was the new baby ring, one that now made her think it could be a lucky charm if she believed in those things. Keep it safe now? How could she? Putting it away in a drawer would surely lead to losing it again. There was also the question of the wrong letter. The initial might belong to her much-hated niece and had too many bad memories associated with it. Did she even want the thing? 

What is the opposite of a lucky charm?

Lavinia resolved the matter by altering the engraved letter to match her own initial. That didn’t make it a lucky charm, however. Not like the one she heard about from the little girl on a narrow, dark, damp street in Santiago. The girl was crying because she’d lost her lucky charm.

“My lucky charm was a silver scallop shell,” sobbed the girl. “My grandmother gave it to me, but she wasn’t first owner. I think my shell was a thousand, maybe two thousand, years old.” (Not likely, but that was what she chose to believe.) “It was shiny and smooth, with grooves exactly like a real scallop shell has.”

Too bad the scallop shell had become an official symbol of the cult to Santiago, Saint James. Symbol, myth, commercial ploy to get pilgrims to buy something in a souvenir store when they could buy a frozen scallop (vieira) for about the same price, without all the acrylic paint that would soon be flaking off. Seashells were lovely, but not when cheapened like that. One didn’t have to be a believer, a pilgrim, to be aware of their attractive, creamy simplicity. 

“But my real lucky charm?” Lavinia asked herself, knowing it would never again be a gold baby ring, maybe had never been one.

“Where is it?” she asks the girl. She was glad it was not a rabbit’s foot or a beanie baby unicorn. It wasn’t even close. The poor girl could only snuffle and continue to weep.

Lavinia knew she would never have a lucky charm, but she understood the young girl’s sadness. The child had lost a part of her grandmother and other grandmothers before her. She had to be feeling guilty. Lavinia understood the guilty part, but she realized she needed something that would help her face things in her new place of residence. Something for the moments of doubt or loneliness.

Something that would help her feel whole, as if she could trust the world that lay arredor de si, all around her, even if it had no golden rings for her (yet).

Then Lavinia took stock in things that mattered to her, and was surprised. She saw she had paisaxe, which she carried around in dribs and drabs. Paisaxe, a word that has no equivalent in English, because scenery and landscape are just so different. Even a word like terra (land, earth, country) was impossibly opaque when she tried to translate it.

Yet she had those dribs and drabs everywhere - in her purse, inside a book, on her desk, in a drawer. There was the Swabian stone from deep beneath the cathedral, a flake of slate from Lóuzara, mica from a beach of Midcoast Maine, a bit of wood that had drifted in from the high sea, a scrap of birch bark, a pressed frond of fiúncho, wild anise. 

None of these things would ever qualify as a lucky charm in her eyes, but they all fit. Even if she misplaced them or forgot them, they never would be lost.

They had been carefully recorded in the pages that were always with her, in her journal, on a scrap of paper. Nobody would tarnish the shiny syllables that were hers, and her luck at coming to the part of the world called Galicia had never been due to some little thing worth a few pennies.