The family Curse

I love Halloween. I love dressing up, gallivanting about like a kid, and embracing a crisp, chilly fall night as a perfect cover for fun and mischief. So this year I dressed in full costume to greet trick-or-treaters (photos to come) and binged on candy I otherwise never touch. And after The Banker retired for the night, I stayed up and watched Most Haunted Live, where a bunch of Brits travel to haunted locals and try to convene with the dead. All great fun, if you ask me, but it's not The Banker's cup of tea. And oddly enough, it's not my brother-in-law's cup of tea, either. Maybe it's because of the family they married into. What my family finds comfortable and normal, most find bizarre or out-and-out creepy. I guess it's all a part of living with the Curse.

It found it's origins in Venezuela, where my mom's parents met, married, and began their ill-conceived family. Both were Americans but living in the steamy tropics for various reasons: one was bored, another was there for oil. One night my grandmother woke up terrified, flush with sweat, and dizzy from an all-too-real nightmare that still seemed to clutch at her from the depths of memory. She'd dreamt she was driving her car through one of the common ramshackle neighborhoods where Venezuelans crowded together in makeshift homes. A ball came bouncing into the path of the car, followed immediately by a small girl in a pink dress. My grandmother was unable to slam her brakes in time, and she hit the small child, killing her with the force of the behemoth car. The dream upset her greatly, which speaks to how real it must have seemed. (My grandmother was not an overly emotional woman, caring more for her place in society than her impact upon it. Even as a child, I remember thinking her "cold" whenever I visited.)

The next day with the thought of the suffocating dream still heavy on her, my grandmother ventured out into the world. Slowly she crawled her car through the surrounding neighborhoods out on some errand or another. It was then, without warning, a ball bounced into the roadway, followed by a racing child. A girl in a pink dress. My grandmother was so on edge, she was able to stop in time, sparing the destruction of two lives.

We all grew up knowing about the Curse, but never giving it too much mind. It was just plan weird, plus it wasn't about to win us any popularity contests. It wasn't until later that we began to understand that the Curse lives, in varying degrees, in each of us three girls.
....
One bright sunny day, I gasped, realizing my earring had gone missing, most likely at the dog park thanks to a friendly husky. I mentioned to The Banker that I'd had a sneaking suspicion that my diamond would go missing. "Of course you did," The Banker sighed. "You told me three days ago about your dream where you lost your earring at the bottom of the pool, lost in grass."

Granted, my dream differed from the actual event, but I never lose an earring...ever. And the similarities were enough to keep The Banker warily eyeing me for the next few weeks.

And it wasn't just the occasional dreams with glimmers of some future truth. Sometimes people's celebration of joy would bring a sinking sense of dread, indicating that things weren't going to work out. Or I would sit in an Irish pub on State Street in the really big city and realize that a tchotchke on the wall would fall. Within minutes, for no apparent reason, it would.

But for all the weird, random occurences that mark the Curse's minor, fleeting influence on my life, it's nothing compared to its hold on Sister 1. (Sister 2 thus far doesn't have any wild tales to tell. It may be because she's so tightly in control of herself that she squeezes such possibilities out.)

Sister 1 can sense a loss before it happens, frantically calling all her friends before she finds the one who's father has suddenly died of cardiac arrest. But the one incident of the Curse that really shook her husband occurred right before his eyes.

Before they were married, Sister 1 had returned from a long weekend diving meet, exhausted and sore. She promptly fell asleep on my future brother-in-law's couch. About a half hour into her dead-to-the-world nap, she awoke screaming, asking after their recently adopted mutt. "Where's Guinness? Where's Guinness? He's on the highway!!" she cried, tears streaming down her face.

"Guinness is right here," her soon-to-be fiance assured her, petting the shaggy creature at his side.

"No, the highway! The highway!" she screamed, racing out the front door to the street that ran alongside her boyfriend's house. He raced after her, afraid she'd lost her mind. But what he saw in the street sucked the air out of his chest.

There in the two-lane highway a small dog dodged cars. Drivers contined to race by, unmoved to the pup's plight. My future-brother-in-law was struck dumb. But he quickly rallied to help his frantic girlfriend stop traffic and pull the frightened dog from the highway.

To this day, my brother-in-law doesn't like to talk about that day. He's a former Marine sniper who's seen an awful lot of royally fucked up things. But nothing in his training or experiences could explain how a dream could help save a life.

But for us girls, it's not that hard to believe. After all, it's happened before.