My father was the seventh son of a seventh son. I am sure this was rare, but not unheard of, in the early 1900s when it was more common to have a lot of children. My father was, after all, child number seven out of sixteen children altogether. Another boy was always useful in a sharecropper’s family.
There was no seventh son or anything close to that for my mother and father. I suppose by 1930 American couples had begun to have fewer children in general and my parents in particular. Certainly my city-dwelling parents had no farm labor needs for a passel of children. So, I was an only daughter.
According to my father, being the seventh son of a seventh son was more than an interesting mathematical series novelty. My father claimed that being the seventh son of a seventh son gave him special powers, magical powers. My father would even go so far as to say that Mohammad was the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son and he could move mountains.
Daddy never moved mountains as best I can remember although I think he believed that he had powers to generally influence the ebb and flow of the Universe. He was a man who grew up in the cracked clay cotton fields of Clayton, Alabama and, yet, he ended up as Speaker of the House of Representatives in the State of Florida. He spent most of his adult life working as a lawyer and then a judge. He always felt that he had come worlds away from Clayton High School perhaps moved from one cotton-picking life to another by the mountain-moving power of his seventh son of a seventh son fortune.
From the age of ten I have longed for such power and, until recently, had despaired of it. What chance is there for an only child when the power lies with the seventh son of a seventh son? Then again, how can a Universe span billions of years if it is not, above all, flexible? What if this power of the Universe is there for all of us if only we allow ourselves to feel entitled to it?
It is a thought, anyway, given what I have begun to notice during the seventh year of my seventh decade. I believe that during this year I have begun to be aligned with just a smidgen of Universal power of my own. From my experience this miniscule Universal nudging is heady business. If this is all the power I ever have, I will still be forever grateful for it because it has been spiritual, amusing, amazing as you will see. If any of you have experienced greater Universal powers than these, then I can only think that it must have been overwhelming. I can say that my brush with the power has been awesome and extraordinary.
In retrospect it is possible that I have had some connection with this power for some time, but have just not been in tune with it. For years I have had this unsettling knack of disrupting all things electrical. I have personally been responsible for the major malfunction of nothing shy of six television sets in three different cities, not to mention the demise of various computerized coffee makers and radios. Somehow this seventh year of my seventh decade has seemed to get me in synch with this trickle of Universal power like we are a matching pair of tuning forks with a steady hum of vibration on the same pitch. Being in tune seems to, in some manner, allow me to channel this power toward a specific want or need instead of having it bound renegade- like through my life with costly results.
As I said, this is not mountain-moving material, but transfixing all the same even in its every day simplicity. As I tell it, you may think that these events are insignificant, irrelevant, but I want to give you a heads up by pointing out that the smallness of these events may be part of the point. This is likely the reason that I had to be in the seventh year of my seventh decade to get tuned in. It has certainly been a revelation to me to recognize that the power of the seemingly insignificant can by virtue of a giggle, a tear, a smile be, in fact, the essence of a mountain moved.
The first of these more in-tune events occurred with my oldest daughter. My husband and I were visiting her in transit from our home in Florida to our home in North Carolina. She had planned dinner for us at a restaurant two blocks from her house. The restaurant location afforded us the opportunity for a heart-healthy stroll to and from dinner which seemed like a reasonable idea even in January in Birmingham, Alabama. My husband and I had left Florida on a warm, sunny morning, but I found myself dressed up and coatless on a chilly Birmingham evening. My daughter solved this problem by pulling out from the back of her closet a lovely black lambswool coat. By happenstance it was a perfect fit for me and, as I discovered on our walk to and from dinner, it was warm and comfortable. Now, here is the power-flow pivot point. I said to Sandy, “This is a lovely coat,” while thinking, “I would like to have this coat.”
Sandy replied, “Why don’t you keep it. I never use it.”
Ordinarily I would have declined this offer even from my own daughter, but I suddenly felt all right about receiving it from her and, so, I smiled and said, “I would love to have it as long as you will consider it my birthday present.” She agreed and so, easy as pie, I was in possession of a lovely new coat.
Prior to leaving Florida I had insisted that my husband pack my typewriter up for the trip to North Carolina. We discussed the fact that I did not really have a place for my writing and typing in the house in North Carolina. I told him that I believed that I could fix that. I told him that on the next occasion that our youngest daughter went antique shopping with me I would say to her, “I need a desk for my typewriter,” and that I believed that in return she would say, “I have that desk at the beach house that I am not using. Would you like it?” I told him that upon her offer I would be prepared to accept and the desk problem would be solved.
Within two weeks of our return to North Carolina I found myself walking into an antique shop with our youngest girl. As if I had typed out the script myself and had omniscient control of all the characters I said, “I am looking for a desk for my typewriter.”
My daughter looked around and pointed to a desk across the room and asked, “What about this one?”
“No,” I replied, “That one is not quite right.”
“You know, “ she said, “I have that desk at the beach house I’m not using.”
“The one with the green top that is sitting in the spare bedroom with the bunk beds?” I innocently inquired.
“Why, yes,” she replied.
“I’ll take it,” I said, “As long as you’ll give it to me for my birthday.”
She agreed and we walked on about the store until I started to giggle. I had to tell her, then, that I had essentially written the scenario myself and that she had quite beautifully and on cue fallen into my trap. Again, perhaps, she was drawn into this trap by the power of my seven of seven.
Which brings me to the third of these recent power plays that have brought me desired gifts for my birthday. In recent weeks on my afternoon walks I have been thinking about some of my regrets. Not big regrets, but the little ones that in the long run like the grain of sand in your shoe can become the most troublesome. I have wished for some chance to take just one or two of those regrets back.
My middle daughter came to the North Carolina house to see us just this week. After some catching up she said, “I need to show you something.”
I followed her to my bedroom and she knelt by the bed and held up the edge of the bed skirt. “This is silk,” she said, “I know because of the water stain that is here. When you were away and Frank, the boys and I stayed here during the soccer tournament, Cabell got water on the carpet and the edge of the bed skirt. You can see how the water moved along the silk to create this crescent-shaped water mark. I would like to know where the bed skirt came from, so that I can replace it.”
She stood up and looked at me. She and I share this memory of a day when she was ten years old. That day she had her pet mouse in the living room of our house and the mouse turned over its water bowl on my silk sofa. This silk sofa was my prize possession at the time, my nicest piece of furniture, and the water spill left a big water stain circle right in the middle of it. When the ten year old came to find me and confess the spill I responded by throwing the unabridged dictionary in her direction. It was a moment of fury and frustration for me, a moment without an ounce of physical harm, but no question a subsequent pound of spiritual angst.
What were the chances that we would be able to stand together by the silk bed skirt re-living the confession and the dictionary heaving these forty years later? Through my tears I had to smile and say, “Absolutely not. I cannot even see that water mark and I will not let you replace the bed skirt by any means. This is a great gift that you and Cabell have given me for my birthday. I am so happy on this day to be able to take back a regret that I have had for these many years. Tell Cabell thank you for the birthday present.”
So, there is this great power open to me. This is an amazing power to feel things, to wish for things, to ask for things and to find them brought to me and given to me. Perhaps this power has been there all of the time and my seventh year of my seventh decade has just aligned me to the point of recognition and acceptance, who knows? In two days it will be my seventy-eighth birthday and the only person still searching for a gift is my husband. I may find a way to make it easy on him in the next forty-eight hours; I’ll just have to think about what I want and don’t worry I’ll make good use of my wish before I blow out the candles on my cake. Given what I’ve seen so far with every day wishes, I can only imagine what a birthday wish might bring.