I wasn’t thinking about the doll when I passed by. It has always been there—my grandmother’s doll from her childhood, circa 1915, a quiet fixture of the past. I’ve seen it countless times, sitting still, holding its place in history. Around its neck hangs a string of teething beads—my mother’s own, a baby gift given to her when she was born.
But something about today was different. My eyes caught the beads, and in that instant, a dream I hadn’t remembered came rushing back.
In a dream I had the night before, I saw the beads—teething beads identical to my mother’s.
But they weren’t mine.
They weren’t my mother’s.
And yet, they were exactly the same.
One of a kind, or so I had thought.
A stranger was wearing them as if they had always been hers. I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t even confused.
I was curious.
How did she have them?
Where did they come from?
Who tied the knot?
I thought, "If these beads were so unique to me and my family’s history, were we somehow connected?"
These beads fascinate me.
They bear the pockmarks of age, the imprint of tiny teeth. They have never been truly cleaned. They still hold the DNA of everyone who has ever touched them—not just the babies who gnawed on them in their first months of life, but the hands that strung them, the fingers that tied the knot.
And that’s what lingers in my mind the most: who tied the knot?
Long before I was born, someone lovingly took these beads and looped a string through them, ensuring they would hold together.
Someone tied the final knot, ensuring they would last—not just through my mother’s infancy but through generations.
That moment, that knot, was an act of care and faith. A belief that something small, something fragile, could endure.
And so it has.
But these beads were not made for beauty. They were made for gnawing.
For relief.
For survival.
For enduring pain until something stronger came through.
That is the purpose of teething—to push through the ache, to break through the gums of what once was, and emerge with something sharp enough to bite into the world.
Growth is often painful.
Transformation demands discomfort.
We chew through the ache, again and again, until we have the teeth to claim what is ours.
Maybe that’s why they appeared in my dream.
Maybe the message isn’t about ownership but about endurance.
The things we believe are uniquely ours are often part of something much more significant.
That pain is not just suffering—it is a passage.
What we chew on and gnaw through is not just about the moment but about what it allows us to become.
Maybe it’s a reminder that memory doesn’t just live in stories—it lives in objects, fibers, and knots that hold us together long after the hands that tied them are gone.
And maybe, just maybe, we are connected in ways we have yet to understand.
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