' It was wondrous. My eyes were big and my mouth an O. We saw it on TV, my cousin John and I, so we hunted around for the perfect branch with a Y for a fork and snapped it off the tree. It didn’t work for John, and as cynical as he was at such a tender age of 10 or so, that didn’t surprise me. So, I grabbed onto that stick and held those branches tight. I walked slowly and concentrated hard. Then, I felt it. That stick was pulling down, even against the good grip I had on it. A step or two closer to it’s intended target and I could feel the skin of my palms starting to stretch and pull, almost painfully. As hard as I held that stick, it still pulled itself down to point at some obscure spot on the ground. My mouth’s O could have been the start of “ouch” as much as it was the shape of wonder. John accused me of doing it, though only half-heartedly. He watched, but didn’t see my fingers move.
Then there was the Ouija board I got for Christmas one year. For some reason, it was a big deal. No one else I knew got one and everyone wanted to try it. When Claire came down one day, we put it on the kitchen table and rested our fingertips on the edge of that plastic thing and it took off. We tried again and again with the same results. The thing would just fly off the edge of the board every time. I was disgusted and thought of asking my parents to take it back. Back in it’s box it went and stayed there for months until we thought about giving it another shot. This time, the plastic thing swooshed around the board to point at letters. I don’t remember what it spelled out, if it did; but I do know that I was covered in goose bumps. No matter how many times Claire said “come on, let’s do it again,” my hands would never touch that plastic thing again. Not then, not ever.
Those two experiences stuck with me. Those memories are a constant reminder that there is “something more” to life than just this every day stuff. I’d forget them for years at a time, but they’d creep back every now and then to nudge me back to looking for “something more” again.
On my 30th birthday, I decided to go to the Psychic Fair held in a motel across the river. If it was farther away, I wouldn’t have bothered, but it was close by. I wanted to have my cards read, though I had no idea what that really meant. When I got there, the parking lot held a good number of cars, but it wasn’t full, and there wasn’t a line at any of the doors either. But, one was open, so that’s where I headed. Right inside the door was a table with two women sitting behind it. The sign said $5.00, so I looked down to fumble in my purse for my wallet. When I looked up, my eyes met the eyes of a gray-haired man sitting at a card table halfway across the big room. I heard this very loud “Hello!” but the sound didn’t come from my ears. It was inside my head. And it hurt. I winced and scrunched my eyes closed. When I looked back up, the gray-haired man was looking down at the cards he was dealing out for someone who had just sat at his table, and he never looked at me again. The lady that read my cards said that I was very loved, but by then all I could think about was how angry I was that the man blasted my head open. Did he have to blast me so hard?
There’s been a lot of fleeting instances of unexplained feelings over the years; some of them stronger than others. Twice, someone has walked by me that creeped me out so badly that I had to leave. Once, I had an overwhelming urge to sleep and that I was asleep kept me from getting seriously hurt in a car accident. And, many, many times I stopped myself from wondering at the beautiful sounds coming from me as I was singing in fear that those sounds would cease if I thought about it. I was the vessel, a conduit for something more, way more than myself.
Now that I think of it, I wonder how many wondrous instances have I forgotten or missed entirely? There is something more! I have no doubt about it. It is that something more that makes it all worth while. Yes!
