TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I’m a pretty practical person, but that doesn’t mean I don’t entertain moments of magical thinking. I make wishes when the clock reads 11:11. I’ve been known to carry good luck charms, or talismans, especially when I’m traveling. A piece of my grandmother’s jewelry. A crystal. A little gift from someone I love.

For years, when I had to get on an airplane without my children, I would take items of theirs on the plane: drawings, or notes, or little treasures of theirs. I would grip those items tightly during takeoff and landing, and whenever there was worrisome turbulence. 

For a while I was flying with a letter that my daughter Violet wrote to one of her stuffed animals, a cheetah she named “Spots.” The note read: “Hi Spots we will play Legos after school.” I loved that note: her cute, little-kid handwriting, and the crayon drawing she did of Spots. While I knew—logically—that holding that note in my hands didn’t keep the plane in the air, I felt better when I had it with me. It was as if my love for my daughter was a protection spell of its own. I wanted to believe in the power of that love, as if it were protective, like a forcefield around us. 

Magical thinking is a way we try to protect ourselves in a world that feels unsafe. It’s an attempt to feel a little more in control when so much is clearly out of our control. And it’s mostly harmless, but in some cases we can become trapped by our own thinking. 

Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, is a vicious cycle. People who live with OCD have unwanted thoughts and fears known as obsessions. Those obsessions lead to repetitive behaviors, called compulsions. People often check doors again and again to make sure they’re locked, or silently count or repeat a word or phrase. The ritual is about protection. The thinking is, “If I do this, then there’s a better chance that the terrible thing that I fear WON’T happen.”

Today’s poem is from a collection of prose poems that chronicles a woman’s journey through obsessive-compulsive disorder, from childhood into adulthood. I admire the way we’re invited into the speaker’s consciousness, to see her mind at work. 

Protection Spell Jar
by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Add to the jar the blinking.  Counting  to the  number seven.  Drawing  a  star. 
Counting  to  four.   Gold  flakes  panned  from  the  creek.   The  whisker  of  a 
stuffed dog.  A  salamander.  Freckles.  Star  sticker  pressed to the  hem of a 
curtain.   The ocean sand that scraped your cheek and the wave that turned
your  body  over.   The  breath of air  when  you were no  longer  drowning.  The
first  breath  after  choking  and  the  sweet  chocolate  melted  in  your  throat. 
Suspend  disaster  over  the  jar  like  a  raindrop  that  pulls  the  fragile  bloom 
down by  its throat.  The  windshield  wrapped  around  your body.  Tapping  in 
a pattern. Counting squares.  The blazing heat of the star.  The explosion.

"Protection Spell Jar" from EXPLODING HEAD © 2024 Cynthia Marie Hoffman. Used by permission of Persea Books.