What Will Be

The Daring Book for Girls has a brief section on palm reading, and M's all over it. She gave me a reading--as much of a reading as the page-long overview could permit--and felt that frisson of power you feel when you have a guidebook to How Things Are, and you're the narrator. (Happens so seldom, and less as you grow older.) My palm, like her own, is an Earth palm: square, with fingers as long as the palm. My fate line is wandering and thin, suggesting that my life is not particularly circumscribed by fate. My heart and head lines are deep and long. She doesn't know what that means, but assumes it is good because they are mine. She didn't notice that my life line has a distinct X right in the middle of it. I noticed it 25 years ago, when I had a palmist--Miss Marz--do a reading, scrawling all over my palm with a ballpoint, squinting through an illuminated magnifying glass. She never mentioned the X, either, and I didn't ask. Maybe I should moisturize better.

"What's my palm?" L asked, excited. I looked. "Earth," I said decisively. "Aw," he grumbled. "What?" I asked. "I wanted to be Air," he says. "Hot air," says M.

***

Someone sent me a DVD of a film that's been airing on PBS called The Undertaking. It's a documentary of a family of funeral directors, narrated by the father--a poetic guy, if not a poet. It's a beautiful film, and sad. Mostly beautiful, though. Recommended.