You Can't Hide Your Smiling Eyes

Back to blogging with my three co-bloggers!  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.  (Usually we are on time.  Usually.  Ok, mostly.  Sometimes?  Don’t judge me.)

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl           

Froggie 

Moma Rock

This week, Froggie chose the topic and she said:  The most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.

            Now, I’ve had this topic for a few weeks, as Froggie gave it to us before our break.  I thought it over and over and over.  I thought and I thought and I thought . . . and I came up empty.  I simply could not come up with anything fitting the topic that was not at the same time too “gushy” or too pat.  I’ve seen many beautiful smiles – my kids, my husband, Jon Bon Jovi – but any attempt to write about them sounded like a particularly bad Hallmark card.

            So, I thought some more.  I thought about what draws us to another, the things to which we become attracted.  A memory popped into my head:  several years ago, a good friend and I went to see a psychic, and the man told me that my eyes were my “best feature,” that they drew people in.  I smiled at the memory, of course; his observation had nothing to do with his reading – nor was it a pick-up line, as the psychic was gay – but it was a compliment, nonetheless.

            I decided to go with that memory and write about the psychic reading, the one that started with an observation about what is apparently my best feature; not my smile, but my eyes. 

            My feelings about psychics and mediums are complex.  I don’t know that I “believe,” but I can’t say I don’t believe, either.  As such, my motivations for seeing the psychic were mixed.  I was at a sort of crossroads in my life, and thought maybe, just maybe, he’d have some interesting insight.  At the very least, it would be entertaining, and I’d have an evening out with my friend, who very much believes in psychic powers.  We’d share a memory and an experience.  The price was right, so why not?

            I’d gotten this psychic’s phone number from the woman who used to color my hair, who also very much believed in psychics and their powers, and who’d had a reading with this man, one that left her more than impressed.  She said he’d known things about her he could not have possibly known from looking her up online – things I didn’t know after having spent many hours in her chair over the course of years.  His words both elated and comforted her.  I took down his name.

            A few months later, I called.  I will be detailed here, because I think the specifics are relevant to what followed.  I called the psychic from my work phone.  This is important because, interestingly, on caller ID, my work phone did not show up as my actual number but instead appeared as another phone number for an unrelated company.  At the time, I worked for a law firm, but you could not know that from that phone number.  The psychic booked my appointment using only my first name – that’s it.  I made an appointment for my friend, too, but the psychic did not ask his name.

            A week or so later, my friend and I went to the psychic’s apartment, located in a high rise near Kinzie Street and the Chicago River.  We checked in at the desk and were sent up to a large flat that was chock full of furniture and books and stuff.  It was dark and reeked of cigarette smoke, but it was not wholly unpleasant.  The psychic greeted us at the door, ushered us in.  I went first, so my friend sat in an overstuffed velvet chair in the living room, while I took a seat at the cramped kitchen table.  I knew my friend would hear my reading, but I didn’t care; it just saved me the hassle of telling him everything, anyway.

            The first thing the psychic said to me was the statement about my eyes.  I took the compliment for what it was, though I hardly cared about my best feature.  I wanted this man to see into my soul.  The reading was remarkable, for many reasons.  Like how the next thing he said to me was that I was an attorney, but really wanted to be a writer.  Without my full name, he could not know that I practice law.  I wasn’t even dressed like an attorney; that day, I’d worn a rather casual sweater dress with suede boots.  Out of the gate, he’d known something that I could not for the life of me imagine he could know, not without more information.

            From there, it was hit or miss – but mostly hit.  I will admit that, at times, he seemed to “guess” or surmise things that were somewhat general.  An example:  he figured out my Mom is Polish and always lived near Milwaukee Avenue.  This was not too hard to surmise, as (1) I look Polish and (2) a huge population of Chicago Polish people live and have lived near Milwaukee Avenue (they’ve lived elsewhere, so I had to score him a few points).  But, overall, he blew me away with the things he said.  After my reading, as I waited for my friend, I jotted down everything I could remember in the Notes section of my phone.  Some of his accurate revelations:

*            He knew the number of siblings I have (which not everyone knows, as I have a half brother, which many people do not know);

*            He knew I am Polish and Italian (this is not an uncommon mix in Chicago, but it was one hell of a guess);

*            He knew I was raised Catholic but no longer practiced (could’ve concluded the religion from the Polish/Italian thing but the “no longer practiced” was less obvious);

*            He knew I do not look my sister, that people don’t think we are sisters, and that she has a completely different nose than I – all of which is true;

*            He knew my grandma’s name was Mary and that she wore a certain perfume;

*            He knows I don’t like the winter and that I want to live in California (which I have and would love to do again);

*            He knew I was an attorney and that I worked at a small law firm;

*            He knew I was divorced, and he knew how long my first marriage lasted (he also named some of the issues connected to that marriage);

*            He knew qualities about various family members – my parents, my sister, my brother, my in-laws – that were directly on point;

*            He knew my husband’s ethnicity (impressive, as he is a mutt);

*            He knew my eldest daughter’s exact height and the youngest’s hair color;

*            He knew I was the baby of my family; and

*            He knew the names of two family members – an aunt on one side and an uncle on the other; incidentally, both passed away almost exactly a year later, within weeks of each other.

            Two other things he knew:  at one point, he said the name “Tom,” which just so happened to be the name of my friend sitting in the living room, a name never uttered to him.  He also mentioned “Evanston” during Tom’s reading, which is where I was living at the time.

            The above laundry list may not seem all that weighty, I know.  But I left out the biggest piece.  Most impressive to me, the psychic talked at length about a friendship I had at the time that was causing me to lose sleep.  He said the person’s name and then proceeded to outline the ups and downs of the relationship.  If nothing else blew me away, this did.  Even if he had somehow figured out my identity before my visit, he could not possibly have known anything about this friend or our history.

            When I was done, I sat in the living room and listened to my friend’s reading.  He didn’t seem to hit as many points as to my friend, which I found odd.  I mentioned it to my friend as we walked into the cold night to my car.  He smiled and said, “That’s because I blocked him.”  My friend was actually impressed with the psychic’s inability to read much.  His reading had been a test – and the psychic had passed.

            I’ve never really been able to articulate what, if anything, this experience taught me, other than perhaps to keep an open mind and to not claim to “know” that which I cannot possibly know.  Two of my co-workers went after I did, but they did not have the experience I did, making me wonder whether part of what I got was a result of what I gave.  Perception is reality, right?  I can’t say I learned anything specific (though the psychic did offer advice at times), but I had fun.  I would definitely go again.

            And so I’m left to wonder:  are my eyes my best feature?  Could the psychic look into them and see things others could not?  I sure hope so.  I love the idea that people are gifted in this way, that we don’t realize how much of our brains or hearts of souls we don’t use, that perhaps intuition means something more to certain people, ones who know how to “read” what they “see” in their mind’s eye. 

            The thought of that makes me smile . . . beautifully, I hope.