Patrice Karst, THE INVISIBLE STRING

Patrice Karst, THE INVISIBLE STRING

Patrice: No one could have been more surprised than I have been as to the trajectory and just the phenomena that happened with The Invisible String. I wrote it over twenty years ago originally because I was a single working mom. My son was four or five at the time. He would be really sad when I would take him to preschool. He had major separation anxiety. He would cry as I was leaving. Then I would cry. We were both a hot mess. Nothing seemed to work. Me just saying, "I'll be back. Have fun," none of that worked. One day I just told him what was really just obvious to me, but I told him how we would be connected all day long by this invisible string. If he missed me, all he needed to do was tug on it and I would feel it. If I missed him, I would tug on my end of the string and he would feel it. We were connected all day until we saw each other again at night. His eyes just got as big as saucers. He literally -- that was it. It was like, voilà, separation anxiety handled. He said, "Do we really have an invisible string, Mama?" "Yes, we do." That was it. From then on, every morning when I would bring him he'd say, "Mom, I'll be tugging on the string." When I picked him up, he'd say, "Mommy, did you feel me tugging on the string?" Then all his friends asked to hear the story. I told them all. I saw their reaction. I realized that I had something very special here because love is such an abstract idea.