Premonitions and A Circus Performance

My two children and I lived in New York with my mother and father in the late 1970s until I remarried in 1981. one day after work, I walked into the house to find Mom watching television. She asked me if I had heard that Jacques Cousteau's son Philippe had drowned in a diving accident. Because Cousteau was a famous French undersea explorer, researcher, and photographer, who had made multiple documentaries this news was indeed shocking, but I had been at work all day and had not yet seen or heard the news so I told her, no I was not aware of it. Two months later, an evening news broadcast announced that Jacques Cousteau's son Philippe drowned in a diving accident -- that morning. When I asked Mom how she knew about it before it had happened, she looked puzzled and said, "I don't know. But I heard it on the news two months ago."

Mom was not a well-read person and failed miserably in any kind of political or esoteric discussion, but she had an uncanny sense about other people and life. I called it her "antennae." That ability often irritated me because I rarely brought home a boy to introduce that she didn't already know he was a complete loser by simply looking him up and down while she said, "Pleased to meet you," never really being pleased. Time after time, I told her that she did not know the young man in question and had no right to prematurely judge him. And time after time the damned boy proved her right. She did not have to use her prowess for the kid I briefly dated as a freshman in college, however. Casey managed to showcase his fine qualities all by himself. Casey was a drummer. He kept his drums in the back of his Volkswagen Beetle so he could beat out some rhythm or other with his right arm twisted behind him while he drove with his left. This skill resulted in several mishaps with his car: he once flipped it over, drums and all; another time, he drove the VW into a water-filled ditch; and he was known to often drive the wrong way down one-way streets. This reveals much about Casey. The first time he came to my house to pick me up for a date (which was always to go dancing wherever there was live music) he flew through the front door, tripped on the edge of the living room area rug, stumbled across the carpet with his hand held out in front of him to where my mother sat on the couch and nearly landed in her lap as he blurted out: So nice to meet you, Mrs. Oberlin. At the same moment, like a Gregory Hines, he deftly found his footing a few inches in front of her, and while doing what looked like a combination of tap dancing and ballet, he grabbed her hand and shook it. This was an incredible performance! Who but Casey could pull of an introduction with such grace, such urbane sophistication and charm? I knew Mom's antennae wasn't necessary for this one -- I had watched Casey's Cirque du Soleil performance with mortification and when Mom looked up at me, her eyes clearly dispatched NO WAY.

Although her powers of perception rather ruined my dating years, she had the uncanny ability to predict when someone was ill, and I believe because of this, she saved my life by spotting an odd black mole on my upper right arm. She worried it was melanoma before it was diagnosed and insisted that I go to a dermatologist to have it checked out. Again, she was right. That time, my irritation with her twisted Merlin-like skill was replaced by gratitude. Unfortunately, she didn't have the ability to intuit her own demise and to this day, the irony that a fortune-teller foresaw my mother's death and no one in the family seemed to have picked up on her symptoms leaves me bereft.

Early in July of 1980, Mom and Dad had met another couple in Montauk for a weekend retreat. While the couples dined together one evening, a fortune-teller employed by the restaurant for entertainment circled the tables. At my parents' table, she read Dad's palm and then the palms of the other couple. They all laughed and chatted with the woman's predictions of early retirements, new additions to the families, and the explanations of what the various lines on their palms might or might not mean. When Mom's turn came, she lightheartedly held out her hand, palm-up, to the fortune-teller. The woman held Mom's hand in her own and gazed at her palm, but instead of the usual flamboyant reading, the woman grew quiet, quickly excused herself, and left the dining room. The fortune-teller did not return. Mom was disconcerted and a bit hurt by the experience. A year later, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After the diagnosis, she shared the story of the fortune-teller with me. I asked her how she felt about it and she said the fortune-teller's ability to interpret her illness was not magic or a a paranormal experience. Mom believed most people cannot see another person for who they truly are because they only see what they want to believe about that person. But there are some people, she explained, who set aside those belief systems and this allows them to see others just as they are. She thought the fortune-teller was one of those people. My mother had not felt well and had hidden it from her family for months, but the fortune-teller could see what the people who loved her could not. We could not see her illness because we saw only what we wanted to believe -- that should would be with us always.