I read this fortune in the morning. I picked it randomly from the stack I had amassed. Something about the fortune seemed too cautionary and I began to worry. I remembered some story that a friend had told me about. She read some novel in which a shaman tells a boy of the death of someone very close to him and gives him the initials. The boy begins to worry over the realization that the initials belong to his father. In fact he worries so much that he forgets to eat, can barely speak or take care himself. In a matter of months he was so ill and frail he was at the brink of death. When he was falling asleep into death he noticed a handkerchief his mother had embroidered for him. There were the initials the shaman had told him about in the death portent. They were in fact his own. The boy died that night.
The cookie sounded a little bit too much like that story. Like, there is something so obvious that is going to trick you in such a severe way, you need to watch out for it.
So I did. I counted and recounted my change at the store. I double checked my receipt when I had the car serviced. I double checked my daughter’s homework log meticulously to ensure she had not turned into the kind of child who thinks nothing of duping her mother into thinking she’s done with her work. My change was correct, my receipt paralleled the work on the car and my daughter was as straight with me as she always is. So far so good.
Still I worried. Maybe the cookie had a more profound meaning of the phrase ‘old tricks’. I mentally reconstructed some of my old and most hateful patterns. I love to eat wafer cookies and can polish a whole container of them, immediately feeling so sick I wish I had never seen one of those wafers again. I looked at the tin in the pantry and passed right by them ignoring them completely Ha! I didn’t fall for that trick. I saw my kid’s toys out of order, and by that I mean out of categories. This drives me nuts. I spend what seem like hours, categorizing all her toys in a very specific and aesthetically pleasing way. Before I know if I am running late and feeling like I did something really dumb. But guess what? I walked by the toys and nothing. I just saw them there and walked by just leaving them in disarray. I wasn’t tricked.
Now I am feeling bold. I have dodged a bullet and all will be fine. It is night time and I am trying to train my little one to sleep on her own. She wakes up constantly and not matter how cute and warm she is to hold umpteen times a night, we have decided that it might be good for her to learn how to just sleep with a lot of intervention. She of course, is resisting and I am mush. It all goes well at first and she follows the routine we have set up for her. She does this happily and turns on me the minute she realizes that it is time for sleep.
She cries, I hold her. She stops and I let go. She wants my hand and I tell her it is time to sleep. She cries some more. She asks for a tissue and it sounds so cute when she asks that I wind up stroking her cheeks and encouraging her to blow harder all the while marveling that she can blow her own little nose. She still resists and cries some more. She’s in the middle of a loud crying session and stops suddenly. “Potty’ she cries out excitedly and then goes into what seems to be a very long explanation of the acceptable terms by which she will use the potty. I say fine and follow her instructions because she sounded so cute and she’s having such a difficult time. We go potty and then she says: “No sleep!” “No sleep in baby’s bed. Mama’s bed!” I softly explain to her no, that she has to sleep in her bed. And as I am walking back to her room with her in my arms, I have a moment of déja vu. I have done this same thing the whole week! Anything from the tissue to the crying and the hand holding or the no hand holding and the potty thing. I guess I did fall for some tricks after all.
The Chinese word I learned today was: Joke around. Another 3 character word.
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