The superficial things which bring me joy: part the first

I am a superstitious person. I always have been: as a little kid, my parents would fight most of the time and constant bullying in school left me a nervous and scared tiny person with very little stability in her world. So I created my own false sense of stability.

There's a county highway department garage across the woods from my mom's house. It's where the county's snowplow are housed, along with three hangers full of road salt. My sister, her friends and I once broke into the garage at sunset, stood in front of the hangers (which are left open) and screamed at the top of our lungs. Deep screams from the pits of our beings. Angry, lizard-brain screams. Hundreds of pigeons flew out, like a bat cave. I was terrified and enthralled and intoxicated with power.

The garage was across the woods from my house; maybe 1000 feet or so away. When I was four or so, I remember staring out the window toward that garage and seeing the single street light that illuminated the parking lot through the trees. It is still the only street light on my mother's street, which had a total of four houses on the 1/2 mile stretch of road back then. But when I was 4, somehow I decided it was Tinkerbell's light from Neverland, and as long as I could see it, she was OK and all was right in Neverland. Captain Hook was being kept at bay, and that damned terrifying Tick Tock was not eating any Lost Boys. This was a great comfort to me, and I'd check every night before I went to sleep. Secretly. I'd wait till my dad came in to give me a "mummy-tuck." He'd tuck me in by gently shoving the blankets beneath me, so tightly that I'd lie with my arms at my sides, unable to move. I would wait until he had kissed my forehead and recited my nightly poem ("Good night/sleep tight/don't let the bed bugs bite. And wake up bright/in the morning light/to do what's right/with all your might/and so goodnight!") and had retreated, having left the door open a crack to keep the monsters at bay. Also, as I later learned, to let some of the heat into my room from the wood stove in the livingroom, our main source of heat when I was small and we were what my mother liked to call "upper-lower class." I'd wiggle out of my mummy-tuck carefully, as not to destroy the cocoon, check Tinkerbell, and wiggle back, content that all was right with the world.

I was 12 the time I saw a castle in the clouds. It was the damnest thing: the whole horizon was filled with clouds that were completely squared-off like the battlements of a castle. I'm not talking a couple one-off clouds, it was the whole sky. I remember staring at it slack-jawed and thinking "This...this is VERY good luck." That day was great but the next was horrible. Something bad happened at school, but I don't remember what it was. I do remember, at the end of the second day thinking "That castle in the clouds held off the bad for at least one day..."

To this day, when an eyelash falls out, I wish on it. But I have to be very careful it's not an eyebrow hair, because I decided long ago that wishing on an eyebrow hair will bring you the opposite of what you wish for. Shooting stars are wishable: during the Perseids this year, I went to Huntington to watch them in Randy and Rob's backyard. We counted 27 before 12:30 when I decided the 45 minute drive home had to be attacked. On the way home I saw a brown bear (in the road! It reluctantly sauntered out of the road for my car...) and a fox. That is good luck.

Rainbows are good luck. Seeing birds of prey is good luck. Dolphins are VERY good luck. When Serita came to visit me last summer from New York, during a time of change and flux, I took her to my favorite hidey-hole by the lake. You have to scale a tiny cliff to get to it, but then you're hidden from the trail. We were sitting in my hidey-hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette, trying to fix ourselves when an otter scurried up a sheer cliff with a wiggling fish in its mouth. For 30 of my 31 years, I've lived within 1/2 mile of Lake Champlain, and this was my first otter-sighting. Serita and I both decided it was terribly good luck.

When I'm driving, if I make it though a yellow light, I gently brush the roof of the car. When I see a car with a headlight out, I smack the roof of the car, and if there is anyone in the car with me, I scream "pididdle." If I am alone, I just think it.

My mother believes that an itchy nose means you're going to get into a fight, and itchy palms mean you're going to come into money. This comes from her mother, which comes from her Irish and somewhat-crazy mother. So, my great-grandmother. At one time, she was institutionalized for "spells," and my mother has suspected she was bipolar.

When I lived in New York, I decided a rat on the subway tracks meant the train was going to come faster. I suppose logically, this was flawed: rats would feel the vibrations and run. I mean, they're RATS. They know what's up. But every time I found myself in a subway station late at night, somewhat drunk, somewhat concerned for my safety and well being, waiting a half hour for that FUCKING GODDAMNED G TRAIN to come, I'd scan the tracks hopefully and a special sense of delight would strike me when I saw the frenetic scurry of a rat. Of course, I had to alter that belief when I got on the platform one evening and saw (no lie) 5 rats feasting on an overturned garbage can 20 feet away from me at the end of the platform. I almost vomited (see: somewhat drunk most of the time) and moved to the opposite end of the platform. That night, I decided rats on the tracks equal good luck, but rats on the platform equal VERY BAD LUCK. To this day when I'm in New York, I search the tracks for my little filthy omens.

But I have totems of good luck, too. These are the objects that I treasure with a somewhat unhealthy level of love, objects that I firmly believe will bring me peace and food fortune. I've been trying to document them on my Instamatic account, but today's is extra special.

This is my mother's belt. Hand-tooled and hand-painted, I poached it from her closet in high school (with her permission). I have no idea how old it is; drugs and booze have eliminated my mother's ability to remember details like that. She frequently says "If you remember the 60s, you did them wrong." My guess is late 60s or early 70s. My sister was born in '72, and I feel this belt came first.

It's cut down, and I can't remember if that's something I had done or if it came to me that way. I seem to think I had it done, and I seem to think I was warned it might be a bad idea by the leathersmith. "You can't undo this," I seem to think he said. That could have been another belt; I have a firm memory of a leathersmith warning me about the dangers of rash belt-cutting decisions at some point. But the decision to alter an object onto which I had imbued so much magical belief seems radically impulsive, even for me. In its shortened state, it barely fits my hips on the second hole, and the pointy nubbin of belt that is left isn't long enough to slip through the buckle properly. But I still wear it. I feel it protects me. I feel its age creates a protective force field, a barrier against the world. This belt has seen some TIMES. Sometimes I feel that it whispers to me: "This -- all of this -- is temporary."

It's also entirely possible my mother had it cut down. In the 70s, she was addicted to diet pills. Calling them "diet pills" seems like a euphemism: they were speed. She is my height (she claims to be an inch taller, but that has never been true) and looked much like I did when I lost 20 lbs two summers ago in a not-healthy time. Skeletal. Gaunt. But my mother was and is a stunningly beautiful woman, so she just looked like a model. When she would go out on the town with her friends, my godfather would tell men in bars she was a Playboy bunny so they'd buy her drinks. It worked. I just looked terrifying, and eventually got tired of hearing how bad I looked.

This belt knew my mother's waist, and now it knows mine. When stretched flat, it arches ever-so-slightly into a subtle curve from being stretched against both our hips. The surface of the leather is crinkled, but not cracked, an effect which somewhat resembles the Shabby Chic paint-treatment they feature on the DIY channel. Desperate housewives putting a lot of time, effort and money into making something look like it's been abused and neglected. But my belt is wrinkled with age, but not from abuse. This belt has been loved, and today I wear it to both hold my drawers up (because the handsome President says to [see below]) and to hold me up. Upright, proud and true. It's a ring for my hips; it's my inheritance.

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