Therein Lies Your Luck

This week, we’ve been talking about the “luck of the Irish” and a host of related ideas. It got me thinking about what luck is and why we feel compelled to seek it. I grew up like most kids of the 60s and 70s with generations of passed-down charms and superstitious ideas that seem silly to most rational human beings. I remember one of my aunts teaching me to touch a screw in the car if you passed over a bridge (to keep it from collapsing), put your hands on the roof of the car when going through an underpass (for the same reason), and to pick up your feet driving over a railroad track (I’m not sure what that one was supposed to do). We avoided stepping on cracks, didn’t walk under ladders, knocked on wood, and turned the other way if we saw a black cat. Sometimes, I still do some of those things, out of habit more than anything, and I always laugh and feel silly when I do it. But I didn’t think I really believed in superstitions, either, until a 2014 trip to Disney World for a “boot camp” training offered by my host travel agency. 

It all started quite innocuously. One morning, as I was putting on my make-up, I fixed my small travel mirror to the bathroom door so I could get close enough to put on my mascara.  I had been using this same mirror for several years and never had a problem with it until this particular morning, when it started sliding down the door, faster and faster, and although I tried to quickly catch it, it crashed to the floor and broke. Of course, the first thought that went through my head was “7 years of bad luck”, but then I brushed it off because hey, we’re in the 21st century – we don’t believe in bad luck anymore, do we? Of course not. So I cleaned up the mirror and went on about my business. I didn’t think about the fact that it turned unusually cold during our training. Not just cold, but wet and cold – it was rainy, and none of us had packed anything warm to wear. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, though, so I didn’t think much about that mirror again until things started to happen. Lots of things. But even then, I really didn’t believe it.

The bad luck really started later that November when my husband started looking into refinancing our house to get a better interest rate. Around that time, I suddenly started getting phone calls and letters about a delinquent Chase credit card account. I’ll detail the whole story in another blog post someday, but suffice it to say, it turned into a terrible legal battle that lasted months and included freezing my bank accounts, costing me more money than the original credit card debt was even worth, and I didn’t even really owe them any money! A lot of prayers and a new devotion to Saint Jude (patron of hopeless cases) helped me win that case, but it was ugly, and the fact that it happened at all was incredibly bizarre. 

The bad luck didn’t stop there. That same spring, my son suddenly announced that he was making a “C” in one of his physics classes, so he had dropped the class and wouldn’t be graduating in May as expected. He planned to take the class again, or some equivalent, in the fall, and graduate in December. The problem was, he wouldn’t be able to live in the dorms in the fall, and all his financial aid was tapped out. Then, as he stayed over the summer to work on the research projects he’d been doing, he found out that the class he needed was only available in the spring. 

While all of these things were going on, my father was at home recovering after finally having his gallbladder removed. He’d had a major gallbladder attack the year before while recovering from a major heart attack, but it was over a year before they would do surgery because the heart attack had left him so weak. Unfortunately, the gallbladder surgery made him even weaker, and he wasn’t doing very well. As his health declined, he wound up in the hospital with more medical problems than he started with, and eventually, they released him to go home under hospice care. The next year was a harrowing ordeal for my family as we watched him slowly decline week after week, month after month. They had been so sure he would pass any day, but it drew out for more than a year. My mother was afraid to leave the house. My sister spent all her days looking after both of them. I spent months traveling 350+ miles week after week to do as much as I could in what time I could be away from my work and other commitments. That was my 2015.

In the spring of 2016, I tore my meniscus while adjusting my stance at a pinball convention. I had gone to Jazzercise earlier in the day, and I was still wearing the same sneakers late that evening when my feet started to hurt. It was such an innocent and slight shift, but I felt the searing pain go through my knee, and it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I knew instantly that something was wrong. After weeks of icing, elevation, and taking it easy it did not get better, I went to see a doctor. After a brace and some pain meds, I was assured that it would heal if I was just patient – but at the time, they didn’t even know how badly I had damaged it.

In the meantime, I went for my annual mammogram in May only to be held up, called back for a follow-up the next day, and then scheduled for a needle biopsy a week later. By September, I had been through two lumpectomies and a diagnosis of estrogen+/HER2- breast cancer. On top of that, my gynecologist, the doctor who always received my mammography reports, had quit that part of the business in favor of focusing on hormone replacement therapy. I had to find a new doctor, so I chose to go with my husband’s PCP. As a new patient for her, she ordered a full round of tests and performed a complete physical in addition to reviewing the cancer diagnosis. Diabetes.

And all the while, I was still traveling back and forth to Lubbock, Texas, my hometown, to help care for my dying father, and my mother, who was rapidly becoming depressed and forgetful. My sister and I started talking about Mom’s memory and made a vow to try and get her to a doctor. Then, while I was leading one of my crafting groups on a cruise, I got word that my father had died. So now I have cancer, a bum knee, diabetes, I’m about to start radiation therapy, and my father passed away, all in the same year. It hadn’t even been two full years since the broken mirror. I was starting to wonder….

Did you know there are reverse “spells” you can do to mitigate the bad luck of a broken mirror? I did not! But even if I had known it, it would have been too late to do anything about it. I made it through radiation treatments without too much fuss, and 2017 started without too much drama. Until April, when my father’s sister passed away…suddenly…from an aneurysm. It was completely out of the blue. Unlike my sister’s faulty heart valve that had been plaguing her for quite some time, but went undiagnosed until that same spring, when they discovered she had damage from rheumatic fever that likely started as a case of untreated strep throat when she was a child – all those cases of tonsillitis when she was a kid. She needed a valve replacement to fix it. Open heart surgery. I had surgery on my knee just a few days later on her 50th birthday. How miserable that must have been for her, to spend that milestone with her ribs cracked open, laid up in a hospital bed, and knowing she would be there for weeks.

My surgery (for the bad knee) was just four days later, and I remember calling my sister to wish her Happy Birthday not long before and laughing that we could commiserate our recoveries. Sadly, my sister did not make a full recovery from her operation. After a series of setbacks, including a failed dialysis machine, a light coma, a systemic infection, and the complete failure of her kidneys, she passed on September 1, leaving her physically challenged daughter alone and unable to care for herself. That was three years after the broken mirror – 2017. I think that’s when I started counting down.

I don’t think 2018 was too bad. My niece moved in with us after four miserable months of staying with my mother, who was sinking deeper and deeper into depression and what was beginning to look like dementia. We tried to talk to Mom about it, but she insisted it was just “old age” (she was 71 at the time). By summer, I was starting to have some osteoarthritis issues with my other knee, and in December I had a surgery similar to the one the year before.

I spent 2019 going back and forth the 350 or so miles to Lubbock to check on Mom. Her memory was declining, and we didn’t think she was safe living in her house out in the country. We wanted her to sell the house and move to town, but she refused…until she got lost going home one night, and wound up in another town in a nearly opposite direction from where she lived. We took her car away and convinced her to move into a Senior Independent Living apartment in town, thinking it would be easier for her remaining family there to check in on her. She didn’t like the idea, but she finally relented. That was nearly 5 years to the day that mirror broke.

We all know what happened in 2020 – that was the year that life as we know it came to a screeching halt. Do I think that my broken mirror caused COVID? No, but I do feel like it might have played a part in how it affected my life. In case you don’t recall, I’m a travel agent, and the leisure travel industry all but evaporated amid cruise cancellations, travel restrictions, and statewide lockdowns. I watched what was initially a very promising and profitable year turn into week after week of cancellations, refunds, and no return on my efforts. My business was decimated. In the meantime, on a January visit to check on my mother, I found her living in terrible conditions in her new apartment. It was obvious she was no longer able to care for herself, and with no one to give her the daily care she needed, I made a quick decision to bring her home with me. So we loaded up my mother and her 12-pound Yorkie, and drove back to Dallas.

In addition to being grossly overweight, Mom’s dog turned out to not be potty-trained either. She completely ruined the carpet in my dining room making my dog and every other human in the house miserable. She barked incessantly, and my mother kept feeding her half her food off the table. My niece was still living with us, taking online college courses when her school shut down because of the pandemic, and my husband’s office went to remote operations. With so many people in the house all day, I could barely think straight enough to do any work – not that there was any work coming in anyway. And then a serious faux pas by my husband’s boss right in the middle of the Black Lives Matter riots and what should have been a new era of racial awareness caused his company to lose more than 40% of their clientele and forced the layoff of half the company. Hubby was fortunate to still have a job, but now it was only part-time with a pay cut. But somehow we managed to survive, and even thrive in some instances. We carried out a beautiful wedding for my daughter, whom you know as Christen, one of the authors on this blog and a cohost on our podcast, and we got Mom into a memory daycare center a few days a week. That was year six of the broken mirror.

The final year of my string of bad luck (or at least I hope it was the final year!) started hopefully enough. At the end of 2020, I had finally gotten my mother’s house on the market, hoping to sell it so we could use the funds to set her up in a good-quality memory care facility. But it was one catastrophe after another. Four different buyers with good offers evaporated due to failed financing, incorrect inspection reports, and broken water pipes in what we dubbed Snowmageddon. Eight months later, we finally had a successful closing, and we had the money to move Mom out just in time to move a friend with terminal cancer in. Then, in November, even though we were all vaccinated, Mark, Ashley, and I got COVID. It wasn’t terrible, but I thought it quite ironic that we got it despite how careful we had been for so long and despite the fact that we’d been vaccinated in the spring.

Last November marked the end of 7 miserable, exhausting years. Since then, I’ve noted no catastrophes, and I feel like that terrible run of bad luck is gone (knock on wood). Our friend with cancer did pass, but he was ready, and it was a peaceful end to months of suffering. But the pall that hung over my family feels lifted, and I feel like I can breathe again. Was it all a coincidence? Is there something to this broken mirror superstition? I don’t know, but it’s got me thinking about all the other customs and idiosyncrasies that we carry out without a thought. Do we really believe it? Or are we just going through the motions? And if we don’t believe it, then why do we keep doing it?

Just the other day, I knocked over the shaker of salt. I did what I always do, and tossed a bit of it over my left shoulder. I’m not taking any chances. Would you?

Are you superstitious? Join me on our Facebook Chat group “MMC Chat” where I’m collecting a list of superstitions. Add yours to the list and let’s continue the conversation. 

Behind the Clock

This week on the podcast we are discussing The Luck of the Irish and the origin of the meaning. Years ago, while visiting Salt Lake City, I ended up at the Family History Library. I have always been interested in genealogy and it was something that my dad was interested in as well. He spent years studying family history. The library set me up with an account and got me started on what was soon to become an intensive family history project that I am still working on. One of the things I discovered about my last name over the years is the Gaelic translation meaning “rough fate.”

When I was younger I used to ask myself why I was so unlucky. It always seemed that when things/tasks seemed easier for one person, they seemed three times as hard for me to accomplish. I felt “behind the clock.” So to speak.

What is “behind the clock?” I always thought that there were three types of people:

1. Before the clock: The lucky ones. The ones that never seemed to have a “bad hair day”. The ones that were always praised for being gorgeous, having money, getting good grades without having to work too hard for them, etc. Life seemed to be easy for those people.
2. On-time: Those that lived a natural flow of life. They were never lucky or unlucky. They lived their life naturally and accepted the natural way of life.
3. Behind the clock: The chronically unlucky ones. The ones that were always late. The ones that things never seemed to go smoothly for. It seemed that they had to work extra hard in all aspects of life. These people were usually born poor or were constant victims of some hardship.

However, those were just surface-level thoughts. Life is never that simple and you have to get to know someone to be able to judge their circumstances. No one is consistently before or behind the clock. Not everyone is “on time” all the time. A lot of the time, people that seem to “have it all” are just projecting an illusion to the public because they don’t want an insight into what’s going on behind the scenes of their life. Nevertheless, I was jealous of what I perceived as “before the clock” people. I was too trapped in my misery to see past the surface.

Aside from all that, I wondered why am I so unlucky? For many years I kept a mental/running list of reasons why I thought I was unlucky:

• I was born a female: I am a child of the ’80s. I grew up with the perception of how females are supposed to be, and I was none of those things. I have always felt very masculine compared to conventional definitions of “female.” At the same time, I feel very “feminine” as well. I very much embrace both my masculine and feminine sides dually. But, when I was a child, men seemed to have it all and I thought it was unfortunate that I didn’t.
• I had some unfortunate genetics: I have always been overweight and from a genetics standpoint, I have always had to work extra hard to lose weight. Being “plus-size” growing up was hard. I had a lot of body issues, and I was bullied for being overweight not only by the kids in school but by my family members as well.
• My family was poor: Looking back, this was ironic to me because  I was bullied for being a “rich girl” because my grandparents had money even though my parents did not. I didn’t live in the best part of town and the house I grew up in wasn’t the biggest. We were poor and we struggled, but my mom always went to great lengths to make sure that no one realized it. I ate a lot of ramen noodles, cheap lunch meat, and spaghetti growing up because we didn’t have a lot of money. The poor nutrition just compounded my weight problem.
• I was socially awkward: This was a struggle I kept hidden struggled with. If you met me in person, you might question how I could struggle socially. My mother was the most social person anyone knew, and I was in every club/sport imaginable growing up how could I possibly be socially awkward? It is one of those things I was taught to overcome or hide. My natural tendency when I walk into a room is to avoid eye contact and hide in the corner so no one will notice or speak to me. My mom refused to let me give in to those tendencies. I was taught to speak first and look people in the eye. The eye contact thing still eludes me – being social and speaking to people is a constant struggle for me. As an adult, I was diagnosed with a mild form of autism which could explain my social struggles.
• Weird stuff always seemed to happen: I used to think the world was punishing me. For example, if I bought a shirt that I felt was expensive, I would accidentally catch it on something and ruin it the very next day, or if I wore white, I always spilled something on my shirt. If I got too attached to some object, I always ended up breaking it or losing it. The list could go on and on.

Rough fate.  Was it my last name? Fate is defined as the development of events beyond a person’s control. Fate and luck aren’t the same things. I could say that my last name is the reason that I’ve had to struggle in certain aspects of my life, but it isn’t. Just because one of my ancestors had a rough fate and the name was passed down for generations, that doesn’t mean that it’s my fate. 

Over the years, I’ve learned not to be so short-sighted. Those that seemed to “have it all” often really don’t. I learned that some of them thought that I “had it all” when I was barely keeping it together myself. As a society, we are too quick to judge and too short-sighted to see past our internal struggles. Why would anyone pick “rough fate” to be their last name? It’s just a reminder to live every day with intention. Once I got past blaming life circumstances on my struggles, I was able to begin living a happier, open-minded life that didn’t dwell on why things are wrong but focused on why things are right.

I want to hear from my readers. Have you ever felt “behind the clock?” Do you have any funny “behind the clock” stories? Let’s continue the conversation in our Facebook group: MMC Chat.

My favorite links for researching Genealogy:

Surname Database

Ancestry

Forebears