The Talisman in my Pocket

    

I don’t consider myself superstitious at all. But last Friday night when I gave my testimony, I was more anxious that I thought I would be. Before going over to church, I went quietly into my room. I opened one of the many containers I have containing various objects from my past and found a little hair-band with four wooden beads. That was what I wanted. I slipped it into my pocket.

     I couldn’t figure out why I was as anxious as I was. I had taught lessons at Celebrate Recovery, made announcements and prayed in front of the group. What was reading my testimony getting me worked up about? And was there mojo in this little hair band?

Flashback 15 years ago:

I am walking to a carnival set up in an empty park in Budapest. Then I see the bungee jump. There is a crane taking folks up about 50 meters and they jump off. I ask nicely if I can do the bungee jump. (Just the previous night I’d had a dream of flying.) Prajna says yes. The little Hungarian language I know gets me a ticket. The operators tell me to take my coat off. I feel in my pockets for anything loose and hand my keys and wallet to Prajna. I also feel the hair ribbon. I don’t remember where it came from. It may have been in our flat when we moved in. Naomi likes to play with it and for some reason it’s in my pocket so I keep it there.  I take off my boots, get strapped into a harness and the crane takes me up… and up. I look down on the tops of the 12 floor apartment buildings. I see the Danube. Then the men tell me “okay”. My stocking feet toes are hanging over the side and I look down on a huge expanse of empty space. The ground is a long way down. Suddenly I’m terrified. The men wait patiently. I realize that standing there trying to steel myself won’t do anything but slow this down. I paid to jump, and the thrill is not only in the jump, but in this frightening first step. Then I am jumping. The air is rushing around me everywhere and I am soaring, falling, then bouncing. Then it’s done and as the crane descends, I hang upside down for a minute and begin to get my bearings back. People help me to my feet. Other than the clothes on my back, the only item I had on me was the little hair band with the four beads.

     As I was walking over to church I thought about the hair band. I didn’t really believe in lucky charms. I do, however, have an unhealthy attachment to the past sometimes. Was I convincing myself that if I could jump of a crane platform 50 meters above Budapest then I could read a 15 minute testimony to people I’m learning to trust? Yes, maybe I was.

     I had another talisman for a long time. It was a long chain like a keychain with the dog-tags Prajna wore in the Air Force. Along with her dog tags was a tiny medic-alert bracelet that had belonged to Naomi. I used to wear this chain all the time until it snapped once when I was working construction. After that I hung it from the rearview mirror of my truck. I didn’t think about this chain until I was already at church. I wondered why I didn’t consider that as a comfort object.

     The chain with Naomi’s medic-alert was just an object of memory. The beads were with me when I overcame the natural human instinct to not step off a precipice into nothing. What I was doing that night felt more like that than anything else. At the meeting, people prayed for me. They played some of my favorite songs before I got up and spoke. I felt encouraged. It was like helpful workers, even if they didn’t speak the same language as me, knowing that I was afraid and being cool with that. 

     When I delivered my testimony, I kept my eyes on my paper in front of me. Usually when I teach, I make eye contact. It was just different.

     When I was done speaking, people clapped and I got handshakes and hugs. It was like being helped back to my feet. It had been scary and a bit of a thrill too. Of course I could have done it without the talisman in my pocket. It had no powers. It just reminded me that I once I took a risk and came out alive and standing, albeit with help. Could I have done it without the help and support of others, including Prajna? No.

     And part of my recovery in this program is admitting that. The fact that I never considered an old chain to carry, one that only reminded me of her and not what I had overcome, that was a good step too.

    

           

Boldog Szabadnap Magyarság

Yesterday, the 23rd of October Hungary celebrated its independence day. It’s also the anniversary of the uprising in Budapest in 1956.

The Soviet Union was just another occupier in a long line. Hungary had been occupied by the Ottomans, The Austrian Hapsburg Dynasty and the Nazis before the iron curtain went up after World War II. Soviet Communism brought military occupation. Hungary’s bountiful crops were exported. Poverty and paranoia were facts of everyday life. People froze in the winter for lack of warm clothing. One of the worst factors were the few Hungarians recruited as secret police to spy and instill fear in their own people. The secret police were called the AVH and hated more than the Communist occupiers. Neighbors couldn’t trust one another. Offhand remarks could be reported. People could be jailed without trial and even disappear forever.

Things came to a boiling point in October 1956 when a peaceful uprising at a radio station was fired upon. Days later more shots killed innocent citizens. Then street warfare erupted. The Soviet tanks were no match for the narrow, hilly streets of Buda. Residents of the city greased the streets and sent the tanks sliding. Dinner plates were laid in the street to resemble land mines and housewives stuck broom handles resembling rifles out their windows to distract and lure tanks into blind allies. Molotov cocktails took tanks out. AVH were rounded up and some were shot.

Then the fighting died down. Budapest appeared free and peaceful. Journalists arrived from behind the iron curtain. Some thought they had gotten rid of the Soviet Occupation. Then under cover of a snowstorm one night, thousands of Russian Tanks arrived. They were not the little tanks but the latest war machines. Showing no mercy, they took back the city.

Hungary remained occupied until 1990 when it finally declared its independence from The Soviet Union. When my family was there in 1996 we stood at the Parliament building on October 23 and watched the solemn ceremony commemorating the date. There were still places you could see bullet holes in walls from 40 years back.

During the days of peace some Hungarians were anxiously waiting for help from the west. They kept expecting help from The United States or NATO. No one came. But even what I’m reading today suggests other countries see The United States as a beacon of democracy. I read interviews with prisoners or the gulag in Siberia. Even up through the 80’s the Soviet secret police could have someone arrested and taken away to a prison where they would be put to work assembling machine parts. It was the lowest form of slavery. Beatings and torture and starvation were expected. The accounts I read made me consider that we here in the U.S. have it pretty good.

Now today we have protesters that started On Wall Street and spread to other cities. I understand that the people occupying cities right now have several legitimate concerns. They are frustrated at what they see as not only injustice, but robbery. And some are doing the only thing they think they have left. I assume that most of them appreciate living a country where they can peacefully protest. And that when there are isolated incidents police brutality they are not tolerated. In a few other countries the protests would have never grown this big. And if they were then there would be tanks rolling in. Family members would be wondering if they would ever see their loved ones again. But they wouldn’t dare mention the names in public any more.

There is no easy solution to the protester’s concerns today. I don’t feel it’s right to tell them to just count their blessings and go home. But it will take more than a few arrests and incarcerations to begin to match the sacrifice and passion that has happened in real totalitarian regimes. And those others weren’t just protesting for a better way of life. They were fighting for the basic human rights. They needed warm coats in the winter. They didn’t want to be taken away and thrown in jail for a few words someone thought subversive.

So keep protesting for what you think it right people. And pull those coats tighter as winter comes along.

Boldog karácsonyt.

The first time I spoke Hungarian without thinking about it was when I was Christmas shopping for Prajna our second year there. My knowledge of the daunting language had progressed well from the previous Christmas. Our first Christmas I had to take a cheat sheet with me. Students called cheat sheets a puska and I’m glad I didn’t call it that when I was fishing it out of my pocket in the shop because it translates literally as gun. I had four words written on my puska then. Nagy árbocgomb feleség terhes. It basicly said large pillow wife pregnant. My grammar was incorrect, but Prajna got a pillow for Christmas.
It snowed our first Christmas and for the first time I understood the line from ‘Tas the night before Christmas’ that talks about the moon on the snow giving the brightness of day.
That was a fun Christmas and one of my fondest Christmas memories of my whole life will be teaching Jingle Bells Batman Smells to one particular class. This class was the most disliked in the school with a bunch of nutty students. We got a long great. I mentioned the song to them and they asked me to teach it.
“Mister Faux teach us the Jingle Batman song.” So I said I would if they were good. They were and that afternoon groups of the class were belting out Jingle Bells Batman Smells in the cavernous corridors of the school. Once where Soviet Anthems and communist propaganda flourished was a juvenile bit of western culture. I was thrilled.
The next Christmas we had Benjamin along with Harrison and Naomi. It didn’t snow that year even though it was cold and icy. Prajna hinted she wanted perfume. I was in a touristy shopping area and asked the price of Chanel #5. When they told me I blurted Jó Isten (good God). Prajna got a very small bottle for Christmas.
That same year a shopkeeper gave me a wide warm smile and told me Boldog karácsonyt. I smiled back and returned Merry Christmas which they understood. It was nice to know plenty of people knew that English phrase.
Boldog karácsonyt everyone.

nem tudom

When my sister or I asked a foolish ‘why’ question to my dad he may have replied: “Why don’t chickens pee?”
Years later my wife and I spent two years in Budapest Hungary. When my sister visited we took her to one of our favorite Hungarian restaurants. My then 4 year old son asked a ‘why’ question and my sister answered: “Why don’t chickens pee?”
“What?” my wife asked. I didn’t want my son to learn this phrase so I did what my wife and I always did when we didn’t want the kids to know what we were saying. I Switched to Hungarian and said:
“Miért nem csirké pisi?”
My wife blinked in surprise and then I noticed something. The tables around us had suddenly gone silent. I had just said this Hungarian phrase surrounded by Hungarians. Maybe they thought I was telling a joke or maybe they just thought I WAS curious, but everyone around me waited for an answer.
We finished our meal and the conversation started up again. I hope the perplexing question didn’t keep anyone up at night wondering.