A Little Actual Magic

Before the pandemic, a friend and I were talking in her antique store. She was telling me, in some detail as women friends do with each other, about what was going on in her life. She wanted to make some changes, but wasn't sure if she should.

I listened — really listened — and made some comments, as women friends do; and suddenly a huge painting on the wall CRASHED onto a table of crystal glasses — expensive ones — and porcelain plates, even more expensive. Crystal flew all over the shop — onto tables, the floor, even chairs. We were nowhere near the painting when it fell.

We ran over. None of the plates had broken; and really, considering how big and heavy the painting was, and how full the table was (far fuller than the one above), not too many crystal glasses. Seven from one set, a few from another, she said.

Once, when none of my old friends would talk to me because my boyfriend was so awful, I consulted a gypsy regularly.  “How's the crazy man?” Christine would say when I walked in, and then lay out the cards.  I didn't really believe what they said, but I was isolated and needed someone I could talk to honestly about what was going on. At least I was sensible enough not to give her the large sums she requested to buy special candles and other things she needed for what she always called “the work.” 

I didn't believe in her sort of magic, but I did enjoy talking to her, and learning a little — a very little, she was guarded about the gypsies — about her life. After many years, she did tell me that they didn't believe in girls learning to read, and that she had never gone to school. Being psychic (or a psychic) ran in her family and she had been brought up to do that and trained by her mother and grandmother.

“A gypsy I knew once said in her family, when they wanted to change something, they broke glass: at least three pieces,” I said to my friend while she swept and I got the big pieces off furniture. “They did it to end the old situation and make room for the new one: it cleared the way, she said. The universe just did that for us. It's the first day of the moon, too.” 

“That gives me goose bumps,” she said.

“Me, too. We just did magic.”

A few months later, I went into the shop again and she told me things had changed — she started doing things differently before the shutdown, after that incident. During the shut-down, her business actually grew. And I told her, truthfully, that things had shifted for me, too. 

And yes, I do know that change comes anyway, whether you do anything to hasten it along or not — but we both felt different after those glasses broke. It was a  startling, laden moment, and we witnessed it together, felt it together. There's power in that.

The glasses that didn't break; there were 12 of them, and now there are 5. Seven broke— when I was a child, we thought 7 was a magic number.