The Arcane Arts and my Missing Boys
I sort of,
kind of believe in voodoo, hoodoo, whodoo, tarot, astrology, handwriting
analysis, color psychology, Chinese astrology, ghosts, guardian angels,
leprechauns, numerology. reading clouds, reading tea leaves and coffee grounds,
psychics, hunches, dreams, instinct, positive thinking, chi, and prayer. I
wouldn’t bet my life on it but they have all worked for me and they have been
around forever. I also believe Quantum mechanics will someday explain it all.
But I need to get to know a bit more about that first. The largest collection
of books on astrology is in the Vatican, probably hidden deep in basement
vaults.
Irish women
are supposed to have the gift but in my case it began with my Scottish mother.
When she was twelve, an old neighbor lady told her that if she would bring her
cow home every evening she would teach her to read tea leaves. And so it began.
Mother practiced it and a few years later when she was in nurses training she
found a booklet put out by Lipton’s tea company that showed pictures of various
symbols; shapes that could be found in tea cups, and their meanings. Mother
began memorizing them and started telling the nurse’s fortunes, meaning whether
or not they were going to have a date on the weekend. Mother was a natural. I
don’t know if she had the gift or just an understanding of human nature. I
think she had both.
When my
sister and I were growing up she and Mother and I would sit at the kitchen
table and Mother would make a pot of tea with loose leaves. After we ate Mother
would tell our fortune. We had to drink all the tea but there was always a drop
or two in the cup along with the leaves. We swirled the cup around to spread
the leaves then quickly turned them upside down on our saucers while making a
wish. This all went on when we were like 8 and 4 and lasted all her life. Of
course at that early age there wasn’t much mystery about our lives. When she
picked up the cup if a few drops of tea fell out it meant we might shed a few
tears. If she saw three like shapes in a row we would get our wish. Early on there wasn’t much to tell but as we
got older it became about getting invitations. But always about the tears or no
tears, the fortune or no fortune.
When we
became adults our lives became more complicated and her readings became more
serious. My friends were always amused to have their cups read and one day she
saw a hen in my friend’s cups and told her she was going to have a baby. My
friend said “How did you know? I haven’t even told my husband yet!” If she saw
bad news she never told anybody but she saw death in one of her friends’ cups.
She assumed it would be a relative but the friend committed suicide a few days
later.
From the time
I was 14 I worked with my father on several art projects and always felt we had
a close bond. When he was in his early 70’s they discovered he had an aneurism
in his stomach. During the operation to
repair it they found a small cancer and chose to take that first and delay the
aneurism. While he was still in the hospital the aneurism burst. For the next
month it was touch and go. One day it was thought he might recover and the next
day he was worse. I was sure he would die but my mother and sister rode the
emotional roller coaster, one day up the next day down. I hadn’t been able to
visit him or stay with my sister and mother until almost the end. The night I
arrived I went to see him. I thought he looked awfully young for his age and
although he couldn’t speak he was in no pain and was very happy to see me. I told
him about my husband and sons and all the changes that were happening in our
lives. He seemed very happy. That night Mother saw two wreathes in her cup,
meaning two deaths. The next morning about 7:00 I was sleeping downstairs and
Mother and Pat were upstairs. I woke up because I heard someone coming down the
hall and could hear the swish of clothes. I lifted my head up expecting mother
coming to tell me to get up, it was time to go to the hospital. The sound
stopped and the door didn’t open. I lay back down but didn’t sleep. At 7:30
Mother called down to tell me to get up, we had to go to the hospital. By the
time we arrived he was already gone. Mother learned that one of their best
friends had also just died.
Ten years
later Mother saw my husbands’ death. She told my sister, Pat. She did not tell
me.
From that
beginning it would not be difficult to understand my open mindedness to all the
arcane arts
One hot
summer night my husband and I were sitting in the backyard talking. There was a
full moon but I noticed an oddly shaped dark cloud. I never thought of myself
as having the gift but I said to myself “If I could read clouds I would say
that that cloud looks like a baby’s scull with claws for hands meaning a
death.” But as I watched the cloud quickly moved apart and I thought “but death
was thwarted.” The next morning my
husband drove to his job which was a factory on the edge of town. As soon as he
arrived a man who lived in a farm house across the road, came running in asking
to use the phone. His baby was choking. While the man called an ambulance my
husband gave the baby CPR. The baby lived.
Soon after
that I had an even odder experience. I read Comet cleaner. Well it wasn’t
funny. I was cleaning the bathroom sink with Comet and the foam took the shape
of a baby’s head. Again. Again I said to myself “If I could read that I would
say it was a small baby and I was looking down on it.” A year before I had lost
a baby full term. At the time I was too distraught to want to know anything
about it. I never asked questions and my husband never said anything. That
night I read in the paper that the Kennedy’s still born child was buried in
Arlington with Kennedy. I said to my husband “How come the Kennedy’s know where
their baby is and we don’t know where our’s is?” He then told me that he had
had a small casket made for it and he and the priest had gone to the cemetery
for the burial. I said “You mean there is a gravestone in the cemetery for our
baby?” I had never asked and he had never told. That was over 60 years ago and
it is still hard to think about. I also lost another baby. Whenever my family
is together including my four sons, I still have the feeling that we are not
all there. Someone’s missing. I named them Philip and Richard.
-Jean Clarice
Walsh
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