Sofija Stefanovic - The Magical Fuzzy Worm

 

So, I was five years old when I left Belgrade. My dad had left a couple of weeks before us, so it was just me and my mother and my newborn sister. We were leaving Yugoslavia and going to our new home in Australia with a fuel stop in Singapore. 

 

At the airport, my grandma, Xenia, held my face in her hands and she said, “You will never see Grandma again.” [chuckles] When my face crumpled at this, she said by way of consolation, “That's because I'm very old and I will probably die soon.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, [chuckles] the last time that we had been at the airport had been under happier circumstances. We were going for vacation in Croatia. But now, there were tensions between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia, where we were from. And some people, including my dad, thought that there might even be a war, which is why instead of going for one hour to a place that we knew and loved, we were picking up all of our things and traveling for about 30 hours to the other side of the world to start our lives again. 

 

And in the plane, I cried a lot. Not just because of what Grandma had said, but because I really liked my life up until then. I really liked the little communal yard, where I would play with the kids from the surrounding buildings. I loved how in the winter, Belgrade smelled like snow and cigarettes and chestnuts, and I loved that all our family and friends lived there and I was scared about going somewhere new. And so, for the first half of the journey, I basically cried and vomited and pulled on my mother's sleeve while she tried to get my newborn sister to sleep. 

 

And finally, we landed for our fuel stop in Singapore. We miserably trudged out of the plane and hit this-- We went through this tunnel, this air-conditioned tunnel, and suddenly, we were at Singapore Airport. And that is the moment that my life as I knew it completely changed. 

 

So, my first five years had been spent in socialist Yugoslavia. I had loved it, but that's because I had never been to Singapore airport. [audience laughter] And it was amazing. Welcome to capitalism. I realized that actually my whole life up until that moment had sucked [audience laughter] and that this was the best place on earth. 

 

So, I forgot about grandma and Yugoslavia [audience laughter] and all that stuff. And I just started taking in all of the things around me. And my mum said, “Wow, it's as clean as a pharmacy,” which is what we say in Serbian when a place is clean. [audience laughter] I had to agree with her. It was like we had been plopped into one of the Disney films that my dad used to get for me on the black market. And then, she said “You could eat off the floor.” I had to agree. Like, I felt like actually doing it. I felt like getting on my butt and sliding across the beautiful gleaming tiles, I wanted to jump on the escalators and travel up and down singing and dancing to the beautiful music that was playing everywhere that we went. 

 

I was amazed that no one else was marveling in the way that we were. [audience laughter] And my mom said, “Look, orchids.” I looked around and actually everywhere, like every few steps, there were these beautiful flowers growing out of planters. I realized that the world was this big and beautiful place and that I had been confined to this small gray corner of it up until now. And everything smelled like perfume. Copying my mother, I put my wrist out and this beautiful Singaporean woman in a suit spritzed us with perfume. 

 

We walked around looking at these beautiful glass fronted stores that had this beautiful colorful apparel in them and there were these massive screens everywhere. And on the screens, there were ads for all the latest stuff that you could get, like, entertainment systems and shoes and Walkman’s. And then, this ad came up that just stopped me dead in my tracks. And on this screen, there was this ad and there were these little kids about my age and they were all laughing and having this great time while this tiny, gorgeous squiggly worm toy just wriggles around everywhere. 

 

I was just watching this ad and up close, the worm, its face is really beautiful and pointy and it has these little googly eyes and this soft pink fur and it's the most amazing thing I've seen. Apparently, at that moment, my mother becomes an immediate convert to consumer culture, [audience laughter] because she grabs my hand and we march over to the currency exchange counter and she slams down her Yugoslavian Dinar, get some dollars, we go into a store and she buys me the worm. 

 

Now, this is pretty unheard of. I know that if my dad had been there, there would have been an argument between them. There would have been a discussion about money and how we didn't have much and how we were moving to a whole new country that was expensive. But with just us there, my mother doesn't even look at the price tag. She just gets the worm and buys it for me. 

 

And on the plane, I'm trembling with excitement. I'm not thinking about Grandma anymore or any of that stuff that has happened in the past. I'm just thinking about how as soon as we take off, I get to open this box and the worm comes in this little round box. I open it up and it's coiled inside. I touch it and its fur feels like the softest feathers. I whisper to it in one of the three English words that I know, so I say, “Girl, girl.” I expect it to come to life and start wriggling around like in the ad. [audience laughter]

 

My mum's looking at me with this weird expression, because I guess she thought that I was smart. [audience laughter] She explains to me that the worm isn't, in fact, alive, but that it has this little invisible string that's attached to it and that's how it moves around. And so, once I get the hang of this, it does actually move around in this adorable way that it had done on the ad. When I get the hang of it, I get the attention of this little boy across the aisle in the plane and I stick my arm out and I make the worm crawl up it and he watches very solemnly, suitably impressed. I think, this is pretty, pretty amazing. I decide I'm going to carry this little worm around in my pocket like a gorgeous fuzzy secret. 

 

I start to think about my life in Australia, and I think maybe the kids will love me. I imagine this beautiful classroom with these little kids and I imagine them saying to each other, “Wow, did you see that new magic girl?” [audience laughter] I'll be standing there with my worm, the new kid on the block. [audience laughter] And on the plane, I practice the three English words I know, so, girl and hello, and tomorrow. [audience laughter] I think this is the start of my new life and I think that we can agree it's a pretty good start. 

 

Meanwhile, my mother, she puts her arm around my shoulders, and she wipes tears from her eyes and looks out the window as we travel further and further away from our little world. 

 

Cut to the present day. I'm in my new home in New York, pregnant, having another consumer experience in which, basically, I'm being sold things left, right and center. And I'm panicking, because I think that I'm not going to be a good mother in advance that if I don't buy a machine that heats up butt wipes for babies, [audience laughter] or if I don't buy this special mobile with elephants, that speak in French and sing. [audience laughter] And the more I'm stressing about this, I suddenly remember the best toy that I ever had, which was the worm. 

 

So, while I've got my computer in front of me and I Google magic fuzzy worm, and it comes up immediately. [audience laughter] And so, remember when I first saw this worm, it was like the best thing that I had seen in my entire life. And now, I feel very confronted, because this image that has come up in front of me, the worm looks really crap. Like, it just looks like this piece of matted fuzz with this piece of fishing wire coming off it and these little eyes that are stuck on with like bits of glue coming off the side of them. And the image is so disturbing to me that I don't even know what to do with it. I'm really upset by it. 

 

So, I immediately pick up the phone to call my mother in Australia, even though it's the middle of the night, but this is an emergency. [audience laughter] So, I call her up and she picks up and I say, “Hey, mum, do you remember that worm that you got me at Singapore airport?” And she says, “Of course, I do.” And I say, “Well, I have just found it on the internet, and it looks really terrible and I can't believe that I loved it so much.” My voice does this involuntary wobble because I'm thinking about how much I loved the worm at the time and how pathetic it all seems now. [audience laughter] 

 

There's a little pause and my mum says, “Impossible. The worm that we got in Singapore was wonderful. You must be looking at a completely different worm.” [audience laughter] And then, I think back to that time and I remember me crying, and then Singapore airport and how impressed I was by this worm. And for the first time, I think about what it would have been like for my mother. I realized that she was also leaving her whole world behind and we were traveling to a whole new country, a whole new language. She was leaving behind everyone, Grandma, who happened to be her mother. It must have been really frightening for her as well, but she didn't let on. She kept it together. And even more than that, she managed to offer me a distraction and make me less scared in that moment. 

 

Even now, decades later, when I have called her as this distressed adult who's waddling around on the other side [chuckles] of the world, my mother is still trying to protect me by keeping the myth of the worm alive. [audience laughter] And for some reason, I think of that Belinda Carlisle song, Somewhere in my heart, I'm always dancing with you in the summer rain. I remember me at the airport and my young mother holding my hand. I think about how when we got to Australia, the kids didn't actually love me like my those three words didn't really help me out much. [audience laughter] I got laughed at and I got bullied and kids called me stupid and dummy and things like that, because I couldn't speak English. 

 

I know that I can't actually protect my future kid from the world. Like, I'm sure that he'll get teased, because maybe he'll have big ears like his dad or he'll have a big nose like me. There are plenty of far worse things that he's going to have to learn about in the world that I can't protect him from. But what I can do is offer some protection in the form of that magic that my mother offered me, a way of seeing the world as a wonderful place instead of just a frightening place. I know that it works, because somewhere in my heart that worm is still dancing like it did that day and it is still the most magical thing that I have seen. Thank you.