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I’ve been listening to Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming. As she recounts her childhood memories, I have also started to think about documenting my own childhood as I remember it.
Today, I was conducting some research for my new WIP book, and I was searching for news stories about fortunetellers. Sadly, many of the stories I came across were about scam artists, though I don’t know if I should have expected anything different. In fact, one woman turns to the prognosticatory power of the humble asparagus to try to peer into the future.
The character in the new book that I’m working on will most likely be a “real” fortune teller, but who knows, maybe they will also have a bit of the scam artist in them.
As I was researching, a memory from my college years bubbled up from the depths of my brain vault. Before I moved in with my sister (yes, we were roommates as we both attended college in California), she had a graduate student roommate. This roommate was quiet, and not very social. She was an art student and, naturally, had very little money.
Their apartment was furnished in a style suited to both this woman’s finances and her artistic tendencies. The walls were covered in Avant Garde art prints, and in addition to the obligatory flaccid futon in the living room, there was also a wooden board sitting on two blue milk crates to serve as the coffee table.
Whenever I would visit my sister, we’d often find her roommate on the couch with her phone (we had landlines back in those ancient times) glued to her ear. She would say very little, but she would listen to the person on the other end for hours on end.
It wasn’t until she had moved out that my sister let me know that her roommate had been addicted to 1-800-psychic hotlines (which were a big thing in the 80s and 90s). Suddenly, all of the frustrations that my sister had regaled me with made sense.
Her roommate had been moody and abrupt. Given her propensity to spend all her money on strangers willing to tell her what she wanted to hear, we surmised that she was most likely depressed.
I myself am going to visit a fortune teller as research for my new book. I don’t actually believe that a stranger can know what the future holds in general, let alone what the future holds for me. But the desire to connect with someone, the desire to want to reach out to universal energies, the desire to have agency over our chaotic lives, well, I have all of those desires as well, and I can easily see wanting to turn to the idea that there is a way to know the future.
Of course, deep down, I know that I can’t know the future. I had no idea all those years ago when I became roommates with my sister that those years of bonding would provide me with warm memories to keep with me long after my sister unexpectedly passed away to cancer. Looking back as I write this post, I can see that there is power in memory. Power in reviewing the past. And that power can help me to better understand myself so that I can be better prepared for the future.
And that is a truly magical thing.
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