East

Neddy

TO SAY THAT MY MOTHER was superstitious would be like saying the great blizzard of 1539 was naught but a light snowfall.

Every single thing a body did in our house was charged with meaning. To sweep dust out the front door was to sweep away all your good luck. To sing while baking bread was to guarantee the arrival of ill fortune. To have an itch on the left side of your body meant certain disaster. And if you sneezed on a Wednesday, you would surely receive a letter—good news if you were facing east and bad if facing north.

Father liked to tell the story of how he first learned of Mother's "birth-direction" superstition.

When Father and Mother announced their engagement to her family, the first words to come out of his future mother-in-law's mouth were "But Arne, we don't even know what your birth direction is!" is

Father said that he gaped at her, totally bewildered.

"Yes, Arne, we must know right away, before you and Eugenia make any more plans."

"Oh, I'm quite certain he's a south, or a southeast," Mother said reassuringly.

"But we must know for sure," said her mother.

Father said he started to laugh then, thinking they were having some elaborate joke with him. But they weren't.

And Father would have us all doubled over with laughter as he described the pilgrimage to my grandparents' farm to interrogate them regarding the direction my father's mother was facing when she gave birth to him. It turned out that the direction his mother was facing when Father was born was southeast, which was a good thing according to Mother.

What wasn't such a good thing is that this turned out to be the last time Father saw his family. There had already been ill feeling between them that Father had hoped to heal during the visit. But if anything, the strange line of questioning from the "city folk" Father was marrying into seemed to make matters worse, and they parted with bad blood.