When I smoked, I refused to light my cigarette off the same match used to light two other cigarettes. Even now, decades later, I follow the same process with tealight candles. For the first two, my match hovers beside the wick until a hesitant flame quivers and flickers into light. I blow out the match and light the third wick from one of the two burning candles. This ritual has its roots in superstition, warning against three on a match, a story that stems from wartime. If three soldiers lit their cigarettes from a shared match, one of them might be killed. The first soldier would be illuminated (ready), the second would allow the enemy to focus on the person (aim), while the third would be an easy target (fire). Since then, it’s been considered bad luck for three people to share a light from the same match. 

 

Reading my horoscope is another guilty pleasure. As my marriage slowly disintegrated fifteen years ago, I frantically checked my daily Toronto Star horoscope, eager for hopeful signs in the 50-word predictions penned by astrologer Phil Booth. The promise of a breakthrough opportunity buoyed me with optimism and an opportunity to heal and regenerate gave me permission to relax.  

 

This surprises people who know me as a logical thinker. I’ve been a computer programmer, systems analyst, IT project manager, and Internet marketer, all careers which rely on organizational and data-driven analytical skills. I also realize most horoscopes hedge their bets. It seems to me the horoscope isn’t as important as the person reading it, who leans into words of encouragement or caution to bolster their own intuition, a confirmation bias of sorts.  

 

Notwithstanding my fervent wish to salvage the marriage, it ended, and in due course breakthrough opportunities abounded. The healing and regenerating prophecy took longer to fulfill.  

 

I shell out fifteen dollars to Georgia Nicols at the start of each year for my annual Aries horoscope forecast. Ten years ago, she hooked me by recapping a fruitful and productive time during the nineties and early aughts for people born in the first sign of the zodiac. There were several parallels with my life in terms of professional success and personal challenges. While past performance is not indicative of future results, I choose to believe her recent horoscopes predicting upcoming success in media and publishing as a sign that the book I’m writing will be published someday. 

 

According to Georgia, my mantra for 2024 is I'm happier and more financially secure. Apparently, this year for the first time in my life Pluto will usher in a new 20-year trend. and I’ll continue to get richer. She goes on to say my health can also improve if I seek to establish that ideal balance between responding to the demands of friends and groups and at the same time, respecting my own needs and wishes. This seems like good advice regardless of the source! 

 

I’ve visited palm readers over the years, and a few have noticed my two lifelines. At a certain point in my sixty-seven years, my lifeline split. That makes sense to me after surviving leukemia and a bone marrow transplant. It fits with my own narrative of a life interrupted by that episode. When psychics mention past health challenges, I don’t disclose my medical history, but my ears perk up. I try and maintain a poker face, but maybe there’s something that gives away the fact that in 1988 I almost died. 

 

Once, a fortune teller told me I would live a long life. I probed. “What does that mean exactly?” I would live to be eighty-seven, she said. So that’s what I’m aiming for, which means I’ve got another twenty years to go. Maybe when I get there, I’ll shift the goal post. 

 

For the first ten years or so after my transplant, I would stop to pick up pennies on the sidewalk or road—sometimes at great risk in the middle of the street with car horns blaring. I would make a wish as I picked up the coin, always the same: Please let me live.  

 

They were lucky pennies, I told myself, as if I could prepay my survival and ward off evil spirits. Not that I believed in God, or his alter ego, the Devil. I’m not convinced there’s an absolute good and evil... in my experience, there are shades of both depending on where we come from and where we find ourselves in a particular moment. I’ve been cruel, and I’ve been kind. It was seldom about the other person, more about me and my personal demons. 

 

One time, I found what I thought was a silver dollar until I picked it up. It was thin and aluminum, and what it most resembled was an encircled five-starred sheriff’s badge. One side displayed a crown. The flip side revealed a horseshoe surrounded by the words GOOD LUCK. According to Google, these types of tokens were used in vending machines or parking lots in the eighties. Despite my best efforts, I never figured out where this one originated, but it’s been in my wallet for thirty years. Now silvery-white and polished smooth, it’s cool to the touch. Yet, when I curl my fingers around it, warmth radiates up my arm into my chest and my breath slows. 

 

This talisman provided me with the comfort I craved in the presence of my paralyzing terror that the cancer would return. I was desperate to empower my feeble attempts at control, to help me deal with the unknowable, to shield me from the unthinkable possibility of relapse. My lucky charm tendered an opportunity to offload my worry.  

 

Maybe my superstitions all boil down to a need for a magical tapestry of faith in the presence of life’s threats, a way for me to believe that the universe has my back. 

 

Which reminds me of another wartime saying: There are no atheists in foxholes.