The Magic of Things

I rarely wear any jewelry but my wedding ring, a simple thing composed of slender gold bands and tiny diamond chips (two of which have been missing since year one.) It just doesn't occur to me to put any on. Though I do have a small collection of jewelry, mostly inherited or gifts, they spend most of the time jumbled in boxes on the dresser. However, a short while ago, when I learned my uncle had been taken to the hospital with heart problems, I decided to wear a particular necklace and it's been with me ever since. Like most of my collection, it has little material value. A plain metal pendant strung on a waxed cord, it bears a single rune, uruz, for strength. My sister gave it to me years ago when I was going through some difficult changes, saying it seemed appropriate and that it suited me. Since then, it comes out of the box every now and then when I need a little boost to carry me through. My uncle's illness was one more discordant note in my world in recent days, one more unfortunate turn I was powerless to fix. As I roll through this low spot, it just feels better to keep the pendant close. Even when it's not visible, it has been under my shirt or in my back pocket.

So, does this mean that I believe the charm has some supernatural power? Does the object or the inscription actually hold an extra measure of strength for me to draw on, and am I somehow weaker without it? Not really.

There is a danger in becoming overly attached to material things, and I have had plenty of lessons to prove it. For example, as a teen I returned from a walk one day to find my sketchbook had been left beneath a leak in the roof and was completely soaked by the drips. I was devastated to see the months of hard work and emotion I had poured into the pages gone in one blow. I had to come to terms with the loss, to recognize that the loss of the thing was not the loss of the hours and the spirit I had invested. It was the drawing, not the image on the paper that held the magic. It was the doing and not the object. Similarly, when my mother had to sell my grandmother's house, the house I had known all my life as the one secure place in my world, in order to pay back taxes and other expenses after her death, I had to let go and realize that it was never the building that held the comfort and security I had known. It was the family and the events that had existed there. It was the living, not the house.

Still, in the course of packing up decades of collected stuff in order to move from Grandma's house, I came across an object with the power to make me cry. It was a scrap of paper with a kindergarten view of Grandma drawn in crayon and carefully cut from its notebook page. I remembered making it for her, but never thought in the multitude of drawings, craft projects and handmade birthday cards a grandmother receives from her grandchildren that something this small and inconsequential would remain. This little picture, this object, had no magic of its own. It didn't contain my grandmother's love for me or mine for her. If I had never found it, she wouldn't have loved me any less. But this treasure served to remind me of that love.

This is the real magic of things. We use them as tools to dig up the truth of our world. Charms and tokens and talismans don't hold our luck, our faith or our strength. They remind us of it. They focus us on our goals or wishes, and having that focus lets our real magic shine through.