Signs and Portents

First: This is not a post about a science fiction show. Nope. It’s about the average little things that happen every day (or almost every day) that make you think: was that a sign?

My mother believed in signs, which could happen anywhere, at any time, and for her they always meant something good. I like her approach. She also loved the phrase “Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better,” a positive affirmation by Émile Coué, a French psychologist who was popular with some of the New Age philosophies my mother loved. (More on that later: my grandfather was a strict, old-school Lutheran minister, and she rebelled against that, taking the rest of us along with her.) She repeated that affirmation every morning, along with a few other positive thoughts for good measure, no matter what was happening in our lives. Sometimes things got pretty dark. But her optimism was steadfast.

On a recent trip to Colorado, my husband and I were driving along a highway in New Mexico and we saw a black coyote. I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one. He (she?) was sitting politely by the side of the road, almost as if waiting for us. We drove by, and then looked behind us to see the coyote glance both ways, wait until a car coming the other way had passed, and then trot safely across the road. Smart coyote.

Black coyotes are rare. I took a blurred photo, and it was definitely not a dog. Here’s the strange part: when we returned three days later, driving back to Denver and our return flight to Cincinnati, the coyote was there again. This time the coyote didn’t move but just stared at us as we drove past. There were no other cars on the road.

Some people might say that seeing a black coyote is a bad sign. I’m taking it as a good sign. Coyotes are quick, smart, and adaptable. I lost a favorite cat (who loved to wander) years ago to a coyote, but I still think coyotes generally get a bad rap.

Most of my signs tend to come in the form of animals. When we first moved to our mountain home in Colorado, one twilight evening I was sitting on the deck watching the sunset. It was nearly dark. Suddenly I felt a brush of air and feather right in front of my face. A dark, roundish body then swept up behind the back of the house. An owl! I was stunned. But then, as I sat perfectly still, the owl came around again, and then a third time, perhaps six inches from my nose.

That seemed like a sign.

This has been a somewhat arduous semester, and I realized, as I finished grading student essays, that it was Friday the 13^th. An unlucky day, by some accounts. But this was a small turning point: My grading was done, and now I would have a couple of weeks to work on my own writing and my biography of Nikola Tesla. Never one to fall into conventional thinking, Tesla himself believed that Friday the 13^th was a lucky day. I’m taking his attitude. My goal is 2,000 words per day for the next two weeks. Possible? Maybe. I think so.

I’m in Colorado now to spend the holidays with my family, and just as I left Cincinnati, a huge flock of black birds swarmed in the trees and power lines near our house. Then, by some secret signal, they all rose, forming a dark cloud of migration against the grey sky. Time to go!

I hope you have a great holiday season! I’ll post again before the end of the year. But for now, I’m counting on good signs and portents to keep me going.

Kristen