I Once Saw a Psychic Who Told Me I'd Have 2 Kids

When I was in college, living in Tempe, Arizona, the summers blew air like ovens--stagnant and too much to bear.

I lived with a bunch of girls--best gal pals--who lived together & worked together & schooled together. We rode bright beachcruiser bikes to classes. We lit tealights in the stairwell of our walk-up. We cocktail waitressed at the bar on the downtown main street--a bar with live music & art & we took shots with the manager to ignite the nights. If it all sounds carefree & light & bohemian, it's Because It Was.

Just a hop over the fence behind our rental with its 2 beds & 2 baths was the local taco shop and a head shop and a liquor store. Just a skip from that was Mrs. Rita's house. It was a clapboard 1950's home on the main drag that we'd pad by everytime we went to the food co-op or the Irish pub. Mrs. Rita was (is) a psychic, a very well known one for the simple fact that she owned that little bungalow on the main main drag.

Her house was quaint and decorated with that diamond-shaped sign in the lawn that said says her name and her psychic services in bright blue cursive. The curtains were always drawn. A few cars always littered the driveway. And I never saw a single person coming or going in my decade of living there. But Mrs. Rita is kind of a local celebrity, since any person frequenting the center of town would pass by that diamond-shaped sign every time.

I like psychics, as people, being that they are typically asymmetrically interesting in their thoughts and their ways. However, now I don't suppose I like going to them anymore. Age & superstitions & changing ideas about destiny have eased out this particular curiosity over time. I used to think it was fun & interesting. Now, for the very reason that I can't stand violence in movies anymore, I can't stand listening to a perhaps future: I'm simply too sensitive. I can't risk a mind full of images.

Or maybe it has to do with Mrs. Rita. Because after I went to her, I could never shake the feeling that she was right.

My brother and I decided to make the journey across the street and tap on her door because we had a sense of adventure and curious minds and we half-believed we'd get some real insight into our lives. At the door, a young Mexican girl, no older than 18, asked us what we wanted. We replied, and held out the bills in our hands. She asked my brother to follow her, and she sent me into a dusty old room with a tattered wingback chair in the center and soon there appeared Mrs. Rita.

For forty dollars she sleepily told me that I would live a lovely life and that I would find what I was looking for and she didn't think any great tragedy would befall me. She told me specific things too, without me telling her a thing, like I would love three men in my life. At that time, I had already truly madly deeply loved two, and hadn't met the third yet. And she was right, soon after, I met and fell in love with David--my magnus opus--and I'll never love another.

The thing she told me that bothers me is that I would only have two children. One boy. And one girl. The boy would be the older one, and after having Dax, that's true too. And here I am, butted up against the reality of the amount of children I will have and I'm thinking my next will be a girl and then there will be no more and the reason I think this most is Because Mrs. Rita Said So.

My brother got some abrupted Tarot card reading from the young girl and doesn't remember a thing, but for me, it's been at least a decade and I can't shake it. Part of me wants to have more than two children, just to prove her wrong. To tell myself that even if a psychic gets some things right they don't get all things right and just because it stuck in my brain for so long, that it doesn't make it so.  But I suppose it's silly to make decisions about one's life just to make a point.

I don't know how many children I'm going to have (ps two or three are the choices). I grew up as the middle misfit child of three. I liked the set-up: two people to talk to (in case I needed a second opinion). I think multiple siblings help people know that the world can go a whole bunch of different ways. Almost no one agrees, even those people you love most in the world, and I think that's a good thing to know about. On the other hand though, I simply might not have the energy for three. Plain & simple.

Most people will tell ya that you'll know when you're done, you'll get this 'all finished' feeling in your gut that lets you know. I guess I won't know until I have that second baby. I think I want three, but according to Mrs. Rita, it ain't gunna happen.  We'll see, Mrs. Rita, we'll see.