Make Your Own Luck
“The End.” The words kept flashing in strident neon in my face. But it wasn’t the ending. My life was just beginning after living so many years with such a miserable man. He was out of my periphery and had been for several months. I tried not to think about him at all as I felt sunshine and hope cascading in a protective aura around me.
I decided to call in sick to work this day because it was such a lovely Friday and I wanted to lie in the sun at the beach, eat whatever I wanted, and to feel beholden to no one. I felt so free and energized.
As I was closing my apartment windows in case it rained, a solitary robin flew in through the opening, flitted around the room and then flew out. I remembered my mother telling me that if a robin flew into a room, death would follow. What a silly superstition! I packed my beach bag with bathing essentials and at the last moment, threw in a mirror which fell out of the bag onto the tile floor, shattering into many shards. I disregarded the ill portent of the broken mirror and went on my way to the ocean which always drew me to its peace and beauty.
As I got out of my car at the beach, a stray black cat ran in front of me. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I coaxed as I took crackers out of my purse and scattered them on the ground. I noticed that I stepped on a crack on the sidewalk but disregarded it because I didn’t have to worry about breaking my mother’s back because she had passed long ago. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that today was not only Friday, but Friday the 13th. “Nothing will go wrong today,” I reassured myself, “in fact, everything will go according to plan!”
When I heard my cell phone ringing insistently, I dug it out of my beach bag and answered. It was the police department telling me that my ex-husband had lost his brakes, crashed into a bridge abutment and was dead. Well, it positively was “The End” for him, I laughed as I pretended that it was karma for all his evil deeds. But in the back of my mind, I knew that it had nothing at all to do with the superstitions that had befallen me today.
Oh no! I smiled as I remember my father teaching me how to take care of an automobile, a lesson that had come in handy. On the way to the beach, I had stopped at my ex’s place of work and cut his brake lines. Oh yes, it certainly was unlucky for him! I rolled over and applied more suntan lotion, pondering the certainty of his fate.
But what about me? I had to do what was best for me after all those years of misery. Sometimes, you just have to make your own luck!