Vision of a Happy Life A Memoir

The life I envisioned with John began with two ominous forecasts, but ignoring them was easy enough when a life of privilege lay within my grasp.

One came from my grandmother, where upon her first visit to John’s rambling home a few months before I married him, she took a peek in Deena’s bedroom. I stood next to Grandmother, this woman who helped raise me, and I saw a certain look in her eyes as they roamed around the chaotic room, eyes that beheld much trouble and sorrow in her 90 years. The waterbed had a stained coverlet on it, carelessly thrown on the bed with sheets rumpled underneath. The food-spotted rug was a horrid pink, the kind put in little girls’ rooms’ years before, and there was very little in that room that was organized or hung in the closet. To my utter horror, lying in the corner next to the door was a used sanitary napkin, crumpled up, but still showing its bloody harvest.

My grandmother made a tsking sound, the kind one emits when clucking the tongue against the roof of the mouth, a sound I had come to know well while growing up when she was expressing her distain or disapproval. I looked at her and she said, “You have a lot of work ahead of you, Veronica. I don’t know if it can be done.”

I felt a chill then, just like I did later after opening the closets and drawers, knowing deep in my heart there were problems here, but I reassured myself I could solve them. Since I did not know how to answer my all-seeing grandmother, we moved on down the hall to other rooms and trite conversation.

The second forecast came from an acquaintance. At the small community newspaper where I worked when I first met John, it was my job to cover the city government. The city of Wind Valley was new by most city standards—ten years—and it was in the throes of updating its community plan, a task that took hours of public hearings. As part of my job, I needed to know the various council members and to gather insight into their thought processes.

One day, I had a luncheon appointment with one of the newer council members, a woman who was tall with short gray hair and a distinguished manner. I was impressed by Ann’s language skills and her unceasing interest in all things around her. I knew she was a chemist by trade and that she worked at a large rocket-testing facility located in the mountains not far from Wind Valley where the roar of engines could easily be heard on days they were being tested.

After small talk, she bluntly asked me if I knew anything about astrology. I laughed uneasily, answering I did not. She then said, “Why don’t you come over to my house sometime soon and let me do your chart?”

I hesitated, and then told her my feelings about astrology—that it was foolishness at best.

She nodded knowingly. “Oh, I felt that way too. I began to study it to disprove it and the more I studied it, the more I came to realize it’s not foolishness, and I couldn’t disprove it.”

Curious, I found myself soon after in her home where we had lunch together and she explained my astrological chart she had put together. All I remember is that it was a circle divided into twelve sections, representing the signs of the Zodiac. In each section there were strange symbols.

“Although you’re a Scorpio,” she said, “you’re greatly influenced by those who are Gemini.”

Surprised by that revelation, I thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s true. My father, mother, and my youngest son are all Gemini.

Ann smiled. She gave me a sweet all-knowing look. Then she related aspects of my relationship with my ex-husband and my own family that neither she, nor anyone else, would have known unless they had been my dearest friend. My reaction was great surprise. I laughed as she related various aspects of my chart, but underneath I was uncomfortable she had found me out, so to speak. This session was supposed to be a lark and I was there to gain insight into her, not her into me.

Then she began her readings into my future, where she told me I would soon meet and marry an older man, a widower, who had four children, mostly grown. Many wonderful things would come to me because of the marriage, she said, and then she stopped abruptly. I waited for her to go on, but she did not. I proceeded to make light of the tense moment, saying I was still in the middle of divorce proceedings with my first husband and I most definitely was not looking to entangle myself with another man.

She tilted her head and looked me straight on. “We shall see.”