Superstition

Still no news...


Before I met my Good Man I spent around twenty years walking under ladders, standing on cracks in the pavement and trying out extreme sports on Friday the 13ths. I never worried about lucky numbers, always simply bought the next ticket in the raffle and laughed when people wasted salt by throwing it over their shoulders.

Then he arrived. Wandering up my parent's garden path to fetch me for a get together, he spotted my mother's black cat. We retrieved him ten minutes later from behind the conifer. My mom interpreted this as a wish on his part to shower our relationship with good luck. In a story now often repeated in our family, she told a friend that afternoon that this was the man I would marry. Which was interesting as we didn't become romantically involved until nearly six months later.

I, on the other hand, still burst into fits of laughter at the mental image of him peaking out from behind the conifer, trying to figure out how to avoid crossing the cat's path... or is the cat crossing his path. What a test - to bring bad luck upon yourself, or to look like a complete idiot in front of your future wife and her mother! Fortunately, I have a great deal of fondness for the ridiculous.

And so began my education of all things luck related. First I learnt the rules - and, with the Irish, there are many. My favourite category is Celtic Feng Shui. One's feet should not point to a door when sleeping (or you'll apparently be carried out clogs-popped in the morning). You must enter and exit a home through the same door so as to leave the luck in the house, which leads to some interesting departure maneuvers at my in-law's house - they have three doors. And the more horseshoes, hung at precisely the correct angle above the door, the merrier.

I have learnt to not walk barefoot in my kitchen when the Good Man has been cooking as the combination of wood and salt can be slippery. And I am a keen study of motion in trees lest we only see one magpie at a time.

On the whole I think its all a bit of a laugh. But, when it really matters, when my Good Man really wants something to happen with all his heart, I will not jinx it by telling too early.

Wish us luck!