The Tarot Cards

We have a good friend who believes in psychics and tarot card readers. Over dinner one night, she told us about a recent reading where the tarot card reader revealed something only a handful of people knew about her life. “It was crazy,” she said.

My husband Gene and I glanced at one another. As trained engineers, we’re in the science crowd. We need data to make decisions. Magic? Well, that’s just an illusion. But we had to admit that her account of the tarot card reading made for one heck of a story.

Over the next few weeks, the topic of tarot cards would come up around our house. “Cards can’t tell you about your life or your future,” I’d say. “It’s just a trick.”

Gene nodded in agreement. “Still,” I’d add, “I know I don’t understand everything in this world. But I’ll stick with my skepticism until I’m proven wrong.”

My birthday was coming up, and Gene had asked me what I wanted. My answer was always the same: no gifts, just time together doing something new. On my birthday, he announced, “We both have appointments to see Lady Moonfox. She reads tarot cards.” My jaw hit the floor. We weren’t just going to a card reading. We were conducting an experiment.

Gene didn’t use our real names or phone numbers when booking, so she had no way of Googling us beforehand. As the appointment approached, we strategized like we were planning a top-secret military operation. “Don’t give her any clues,” I warned. “When she says something, don’t say a word. Don’t nod, gasp or smile. Be blank.”

The reading took place in a small room at the rear of a crystal shop— exactly like the rooms on TV where people peer into crystal balls, except the table held cards instead. Lady Moonfox agreed to let me record the session.

After I cut the shuffled deck, she began laying out cards representing past, present and future. I watched her like a hawk and sat stone-faced, determined not to help her “trick” me.

“This face card shows you’ve lost an older male close to you, perhaps a father,” she said.

I stared back, expressionless. More cards. “Another father figure has died… and a mother figure. Oh, wait, the mother figure isn’t dead. She’s living in both the world of the living and the dead. She’s terribly lonely and depressed, missing one of these men.”

This was shortly after my stepfather’s passing, so yes, spot on. But I didn’t flinch.

Then as she continued to flip over face cards, she said something that made my mind whirl: “Your past is full of death—aunts, uncles, a friend, and here’s a baby. I’m sorry. I believe this was a miscarriage.” She paused. “Maybe two?”

Of course, I knew that there were more than two miscarriages in my past, but how did the stranger guess that? I steadied my breathing and gave her nothing.

“Almost no face cards in your present,” she continued. “The message is coming in clear. You once had many family members and friends around you, but now you don’t. For whatever reason, you’ve put your continued from page

life on hold, and you need to get back to the work of living. Nurture your relationships more, and bring more people into your dayto- day life. And do more things that bring you joy. And your mother’s life has stalled, too, but you need to let your mother work through her own issues— nothing you do will help her loneliness and depression.”

There was a lot of truth and wisdom in the stranger’s message.

Then: “You have a strong relationship with your partner, but recently something has happened, and you’re having to share him. You aren’t used to sharing him.”

Gene had just found his biological family and was building relationships with them. I’d literally told him weeks earlier, “My once-large family is dying off and getting smaller and smaller, and yours is getting bigger and bigger.” The woman was right again.

When Gene went in for his reading, Lady Moonfox mentioned two moms, two dads—his adoptive and biological families. Afterward, she told him, “The woman who came in for a reading before you is clearly your significant other. You two are exactly alike—like you share one mind.”

The card reader got many unusual details right, which raised our eyebrows, but she missed some. She guessed I was in a detailoriented field like accounting, and of course, I’m a writer now. She thought Gene was in law enforcement or the military, and he’s a software guy, though he worked for the Department of Defense for over a decade.

In the days and weeks that followed, we shared the experience with friends and family. Some laughed and rolled their eyes. Some believed we had opened the doors of our souls to let evil in. Others wanted Lady Moonfox’s phone number.

Do I believe cards can tell us about our past, present and future? No. I’m still a trained engineer who needs more evidence than what I collected in 30 minutes. But I can’t explain how she came up with some of the things she did. And I can’t deny that her message—to invest more in human connections, to get back to the work of living and finding joy—was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

I got what I wanted for my birthday: no gift, just time together doing something completely new, and I got something else, too— one heck of a story.