The Fortune Teller

 I was young, fresh faced, unbroken by any real world experiences, preparing for my grand world tour when a friend asked if I would accompany her to an important appointment. She was vague on the nature of the appointment but as long as it didn’t involve my eating deep fried cockroaches I was happy to join her. She was a couple of years older and married, not a road I wanted to take but that’s another story. Sure, I said, then wondered where could we be going?

Off we went, my friend and I. While I was anticipating visiting an office building of some sort, imagine my surprise when we found ourselves at the front door of a somewhat disheveled house sporting a sign that said Fortune Teller. Fortune teller? Shaman, sibyl, psychic, diviner, gypsy. Um, what? I decided to take the silent, ‘three paces behind’ route and promised myself that I would not laugh, at least not out loud. The woman who had opened the door looked like every B movie gypsy fortune teller: curly hair and big earrings. Were those coins or bells attached to that voluminous dress hem. She wore lots of spangles on her arms. She was very noisy. The entry way had a lingering odor of stale candle smoke and patchouli. While standing there, I discreetly looked around the floor for a cat. There must be a cat somewhere. I had seen Bell, Book and Candle more than once. These people had cats or werewolves or became cats or werewolves.

We sat down in the front room, introductions were made (shouldn’t she know my name already if she’s some sort of psychic). Never mind. I was the second tier guest; just there to drink the proffered tea, look attentive and enrich my soul in this new age environment. While we drank tea and they chatted, my mind left the room. I had heard about fortune tellers, of course. Maria Ouspenskaya did a sterling job of playing the gypsy in The Wolfman, but was I ready to believe any of that stuff. Not so much. Life had been somewhat confusing up to this point and this scenario wasn’t helping anything. So there I sat, silently conjuring up psychics’ names that I had heard about; none of whose stories were believable.

Nostradamus, back in 1555, apparently foretold the great fire of London in 1666 and the rise of Adolf Hitler, among other things. How could those pronouncements be taken seriously and by whom.  What would be the starting point? “I see a big fire” and/or “there’s a small guy with a smaller mustache. Beware.” It was a few more hundred years before facebook. 

Edgar Cayce claimed his subconscious mind would actually leave his body and travel to the land of the spirits. Me too, except I called those events dreams, sometimes I called them nightmares. Who doesn’t vividly recall showing up for a test with no clothes on or something of that ilk. Cayce also predicted the stock market crash of 1929. I wondered: Did he sell his stocks beforehand. 

Jean Dixon began her career as an astrologist writing for a syndicated newspaper column (now there’s a credential) and famously predicted President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. If only JFK had picked up his newspaper that morning and read her column: “stay home, do not leave the house today” he never would have gone to Dallas.

Warren Buffett has often been called the Oracle of Omaha but I just didn’t see him looking into a crystal ball to determine his stock purchases. Later on in life, I too relied more on my financial manager’s business acumen, rather than various planets’ alignments, to sustain my financial health. 

Circling back to that years ago moment in the fortune teller's home, why were we there? Now that the tea was drunk, they moved into another room behind beaded curtains while I was left behind to ponder the universe. Of course there were beaded curtains, followed by the little tinkling song of tiny wind chimes. I looked around and found all the usual cliche trappings: a grouping of crystals on a side dresser, a deck of tarot cards on the coffee table, a Salvador Dali style painting of a hand on the wall. Still waiting for the cat to appear and the werewolf not to appear, I hummed little tunes about fortune tellers and gypsies. There I sat, not able to hear their exact words, only murmuring voices that moved sporadically up and down the vocal scales. Lots of intrigue there. 

Finally, we said our goodbyes and left. I wanted to ask her how it went but, in an unusual display of tact and discretion on my part, I waited for her to say something, but my friend didn’t seem to be in any hurry to unfurl her story and she wasn’t in any better spirits, which left me puzzled: why’d she do that. Why were we there if she didn’t feel good afterwards. I would have suggested a spa afternoon; a nice facial, a soothing foot massage, a lavender and seaweed body wrap. I’d feel like a million bucks after that but she wasn’t me. What was my married friend looking for from this visit: the hope of a baby, a possible infidelity, a change in circumstances, an evil mother-in-law. I was young. I had no real life experiences, only fantasies. The future was a mystery; married life was an ever greater mystery.

There’s an old parlor game wherein the enigmatic host hands each guest an envelope that contains the date of their death. To open it or not? People around the table then explained whether or not they would look inside. What would you do if you knew the date of your death. Would you solidify your bucket list and get going. Would you take revenge on your enemies or atone for your own sins. Would you blow it all off and continue to live for the moment? Can we change our destiny? Do we want to know how our story moves along or ends. The unexamined life and all that. Socrates or Epicurus, whose road to follow. Would my friend’s visit to the fortune teller answer any of those questions. Her life path was a road not taken for me.

We said our goodbyes and then I was off, to explore the world with my Europe on $5 a day book, a well stocked backpack and a couple of small translation books. Wandering around various European countries I encountered scads of gypsies. Romanians mostly, known as Roma. They were a curious lot. Roma people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group. They migrated all over the world from India and they were everywhere, even Russia. They begged on the street but at day end walked into their Mercedes cars and drove out of town. I did not think of them as fortune tellers, per se, at least not in the ‘tell me my future’ sense. They would follow me, asking for money and sounded more like doomsayers: “a bad man will come into your life”, “keep your purse close”, “don’t do this”, “don’t go there”. Or maybe it was just me to whom they freely said these things and would make more positive remarks to people who gave them money. As it happened, I was not bothered by the question of destiny or free will. I was too young and shallow to consider anything deeper than the number of pierogis I could buy and eat at the same time so, for the most part, I ignored the Romas. Then again I highly doubted the veracity of their prophecies. And why were they called Romas and not Indians if their original home was India. So many life mysteries. 

In Greece I learned that their mythology led them to believe that their entire lives were dealt with by the fates. Apparently the Greeks did not cater to free will, everything was pre-ordained. “The Fates” referred to a trio of mythological goddesses known as the Moirai, who controlled the destiny of every person from birth to death. The three sisters were responsible for weaving, measuring and cutting the thread of life: Clotho, the spinner, Lachesis, the alloter, and Atropos, the cutter. So much for the question of destiny vs free will. Pass the ouzo, dance like Zorba, sing yamas! and all will be as it should be.

When visiting in various European homes I often noticed old family photos on walls and dressers. People in foreign countries tended to keep photos of long dead people more than we did. Photography, for previous generations, was a rare and expensive event. One wedding photo, perhaps, but oftentimes, the photos were all of much older dead relatives. Somewhere in my travels, I learned that the photo was taken after the person was dead and the photo was retouched to draw in open eyes. When I asked about the children’s outfits, I was told there was a time when little boys all wore dresses. The story was that baby boys died more easily, so they were dressed as girls to fool the angel of death who flew over and past them, believing they were girls. And to think that my brothers complained about their sailor suits. Other ‘old wives’ versions said that it was because boys were more valuable than girls so were more likely to be kidnapped and sold by the gypsies. [In truth, baby boys were biologically weaker and more susceptible to diseases.] Today the dress story has been revised to say that boys were dressed as girls because it was easier to change their diapers. I'm not buying that story. Those kids all looked like they had numerous nannies hovering about, ready to take care of any body leak from whatever origin. 

And even the word gypsy now is a pejorative. While my real life experiences said otherwise, I preferred the fantasy version of the gypsy heart that symbolized a free spirited,  adventurous and nomadic soul who valued freedom, exploration and independence over stability and routine. “But that was me”, I cried. My gypsy heart eschewed marriage and routine. I could have been a gypsy. Wasn’t there an old folk song entitled Gypsy Rover. One of my favorite ‘coming of age’ books was D. H. Lawrence’s The Virgin and the Gypsy. If only books and songs were like real life.

Eventually, real life had its way with me. On my 55th birthday two friends surprised me with an unusual gift: a visit to a fortune teller. Wait, what, why? What about my black and white, buttoned up world made them think I would enjoy such a gift, or was I too buttoned up? Nah. I demurred. Couldn’t we just have lunch somewhere fun, drink too much wine and be grateful for each other’s company. I explained that there was no need for a peek into my future. I had a plan: I would retire in a few short years and, if both my bro and I were still single, which appeared fairly likely at this point, we could once again share an abode. After all, we had lived under the same roof during our first 18 or so years and had always gotten along so why not spend our last years together. I related visions of me as the creepy old grey haired lady in a too large purple dress who wandered around the back yard pulling vegetables and weeds from the ground while my bro sauntered out each morning in his breakfast stained plaid bathrobe to collect the daily newspaper. We would be fine. I would be fine. Nope. My friends were having none of it.

I invoked the time honored birthday rule: lunch and wine first, lots of laughs and all else later, stressing the ‘all else later’. Sorry, I was told, not this time. Okay fine!!!!! Off we went. Long story short: the gypsy fortune teller read my tarot cards, divined that I would wed soon, to someone who, supposedly, was not my type and that we would one day leave the big city. Hah! humph! snark! as if! At this point, I sure was glad that I wasn’t paying for this tripe. Thank you, thank you, all around and off we went to lunch, wine and many versions of  ‘what she said’. What followed is a bit of well known history: ten months later I married an engineer and later moved to Maryland but I’m still never going to visit a fortune teller again. Life can’t get any better than it is today so why would I tempt the fates. Yamas!!