Knock on wood for good luck
Friday the 13 is unlucky
Four leaf clovers are lucky
Cross your fingers for luck
Bad news comes in threes
Break a mirror for 7 years bad luck
Walking under a ladder is bad luck
The list is endless. There are common ones that everyone knows and believes or at least equates with luck, good or bad. Come on, if anyone tells you something bad happened to them last Friday and that Friday happened to fall on the 13th of the month, don’t tell me you don’t try to comfort them with, ‘Well it was Friday the 13th!’ Thereby, absolving them of anything they might have done to cause it and putting the blame squarely where it belongs. Thank goodness it didn’t happen on Thursday.
It is somewhat of a comfort to be able to blame the day for luck or lack of it. I am actually surprised that we have not designated more days as unlucky as Friday the 13th doesn’t happen that often so now we have to make up our own personal associations and superstitions to fill in the gap.
We all do it. We relate unrelated things to events in our lives.
I went all through 2020 with my breath held and looking in on Loren more nights than not, asking her if she had taken her seizure medication or just checking her weekly container myself.
Loren had her first seizure on a camping trip. We were in the Catskills, at the campground we had come to call our ‘home campground’. It was the first one we visited after getting our first camper, we always went there for our first trip every year and we visited multiple times throughout the camping season. The year was 2014. Loren’s seizure was very scary and all of us have come away from that experience scarred in our own ways.
We have never been back to that campground and we got rid of that camper. Because it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t at that campground? We had been to that campground over a dozen times before and it never happened. Or it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t in that camper? Again, camped in that camper many times with nothing bad happening. Still, the scene of the crime, so to speak. An unspoken pact between us all that we would move forward and not look back.
After awhile, we had no choice but to get back to normal. I had to let Loren sleep in her own bed, in her own room. No, I couldn’t put a monitor in her room, she needed her privacy. Random noises would make us call out ‘Loren?’ and if she didn’t answer we would run to her room. We would get up in the middle of the night to peek in her room, just to make sure.
Then one night, we were asleep and Lou knocked on our door. We go to the door and he says ‘She’s doing it again’. The year was 2016.
I kept a journal of these events. Trying to recreate what happened in the days prior and documenting what we did after. Trying to find anything to grasp that we could do differently so it wouldn’t happen again.
Loren’s doctor upped her medication and we went back to watching and checking on her.
The next time, we were on vacation in Tennessee, we were getting up very early to take my parents to catch a bus and Lou knocked on our door, just about a ½ hour before we needed to get up. He says, ‘I think Loren is having a seizure’. The year was 2018.
Can you see it? There was something about even years that was causing Loren to have seizures! I had found the answer! But I was not going to tell anyone, that would be bad luck!
Loren’s doctor upped her medication and I knew I could breathe until 2020.
I was not looking forward to 2019 being over, but it finally turned 2020 and I held my breath, still keeping the knowledge to myself and watching and checking medication.
When we counted down to 2021, I was thankful for 2020 to be over and Loren to be seizure free for over 2 years. I did then let them in on my even year theory. Everyone agreed it was great that Loren had gone so long without a seizure but I am not sure they bought into the even year thing.
For me, I will hold my breath again come 2022. After all, it is an even year and where would we be if we didn’t have our superstitions?
Talk to you next month. Until then, may you be blessed with warmth in your home, love in your heart, peace in your soul and joy in your life.