YOU'RE SO LUCKY!
How many times have you heard the expression, “You’re so lucky?” I have heard those jealous sounding words countless times. What gives us luck? Is it living well? Could it be the belief in a higher power? There are many symbols of luck but are they just placebos?
Luck does appear to play a huge role in the game of life. Is it, however, the most appropriate thing to say to someone who has achieved what you would like to have happened to you? Could their so-called “luck” have been destiny, fate, or chance?
The incident that had me think so much about the meaning of the declaration, “You’re so lucky!” happened when I was sitting at the dryers after my manicure. The woman sitting across the counter was someone whose children had been in school, and on sports teams, with my children. I showed the interested former fellow soccer mom the cutest video of my seven-month-old granddaughter. In the clip, the baby can be seen ferociously kissing her aunt—my daughter, who had recently married. After remarking that all of her adult children are still single, the divorced mother of four responded, “You’re so lucky!”
Just what did she mean? She may have felt a sting upon learning that my children found love and marriage and that our son and his wife have a beautiful baby. Gosh, this reminds me of the outdated poem we used to sing when we were in grade school; we even penned the words in autograph books, “…First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes…(fill in the name) with a baby carriage.” Our joy may have been magnified in her eyes by the fact that my husband and I trumped her by becoming grandparents first.
When my brother Stuart survived a heart attack, the kind that’s commonly known as the widow-maker, he asked his doctor how it was that he lived. That happened right around the time that the television news star Tim Russert died suddenly from the same type of heart blockage. The doctor’s matter-of-fact reply was simply, “You were just lucky.” Lucky to need open-heart surgery? You could argue about the meaning of luck in that case.
In thinking about the symbols denoting luck, my first thought takes me back to my childhood summers. Our family spent the time at various Catskill Mountain bungalow colonies, where scouting for four-leaf clovers on the massive green lawns was a favorite activity of mine. From this, all kinds of memories about symbols of luck spring to mind.
The red bendel (string or ribbon), for example, which my Aunt Cerna would insist should be tied to a baby’s crib, or placed in a new car, was used ostensibly to ward off the evil eye. Her boding was so strong that red ribbons are still obediently kept in our glove compartments nearly forty years later.
I can easily visualize the red bow that my concerned aunt had the florist attach to the plant she and my Uncle Jerome brought us for our new home in 1981. That was weeks before she passed away. You may question here if her luck had run out. Maybe for her at that time that was somehow lucky. Who’s to judge?
When I recently called my aunt’s surviving brother Milton and his wife Myra, now into their ninth decade of life, and Myra told me they were busy and happy, I immediately thought about the many people who probably tell them, “You’re so lucky!” Be it luck, dedication, belief, hard work, or whatever, it is an interesting subject to contemplate.
Do you believe in luck? What makes you feel lucky? How many symbols of luck do you keep in your possession?
I’m pictured below with my cousin Chuck Friedman who, in his eighties, wrote the book on luck, which I helped edit (cover below). Read it to discover that no matter where or what it’s from, we can all use a little mazel (luck) at times.
Chuck Friedman “Mr. Lucky” with me in Houston at a family reunion October 2018
