LatinosUSA

For the ritual, I had five balloons filled with helium and then tied to my fingers—three to fingers of my right hand and two to fingers of my left.

The employee at Giant, bless her, suspended her perplexity, filled the balloons, and dove into the difficult task of tying their strings to the base of my fingers. After tying the final balloon, she smiled with pride at our completed project that she didn’t understand.

I said, “I’m going to take these balloons to the roof of my apartment building and untie them from my hands myself and let them go. They’ll get all tangled together before I get them all loose and let them go, but that’s the point. Each balloon represents one of the five men that my heart is still wrapped up in. It will be a release ritual.”

“Are you sure you’re not from a different time?” the employee asked. “Five men, and rituals? Are you Wiccan? I think you’re from an old time I hear about, when women called the shots. You’re getting the opposite of married to five boys.”

She considered my fingers, then pointed at them.

“Those are five rings you’re gonna take off,” she said. “I’ve only taken one ring on and off. You’re a woman from a different time.”

I became aware of a dissonance between the upward pull of the balloons on my hands by my sides and my downward slouching posture.

“Do you have a knife or a pin?” I asked.

“There’s a box cutter in the customer service booth.”

“Can you please do one more thing for me? Can you please pop them one at a time for me? I promise I’ll still pay for them.”

She retrieved the box cutters and pulled down one balloon at a time and popped it. Then she helped me untie the strings from the base of my fingers.

My posture was much more upright.

“What good is a ritual without the assistance of a lady-in-waiting?” I asked.

With a slight nod/bow, she said, “Happy to help.”

From that grocery store, I strode with my head held high.