Palm Reader

“Give me your hand. Let me see what is in your future.”

I heard my mother say that often. She loved to read palms. Predicting the future by interpreting the unique lines and shapes of someone’s hands.

Mom was also a devout Catholic.

In the last weeks of her life, I held her hand as I sat by her hospital bedside. But I didn’t read her palm.

She suffered. Gut-wrenchingly.

In agonizing repetition, her fever-induced plea hammered out: “Jesus, why have you abandoned me?”

I had no answer.

As she flowed in and out of consciousness, I tried various tactics to calm her restless soul.

Singing.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” I started. At first, I barely whispered. As my confidence grew, my vocals swelled. Sound bounced off the glossy painted walls, amplified and distorted.

Mom grimaced. Was it pain or my voice? I stopped, my throat dry and scratchy.

Maybe praying would comfort her. And be quieter.

I moved closer to Mom’s mechanical bed, covered in blue waterproof medical pads and stiff white linens. Her face was obscured by an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. Bandages wrapped nearly every limb.

Her skin was slowly dying.

My chest heavy and eyes wet, I covered her bruised hand with mine.

“Mom, let’s say the rosary,” I said to her, not expecting a response. Outside the room, I could hear nurses chatting, monitors monotonously beeping, and a floor polisher humming.

It was annoying.

I needed a rosary. Looking around her bed, I saw a half-empty tissue box, a packet of antiseptic wipes, and the call button. Nothing even vaguely religious.

She didn’t know I didn’t have a rosary, so I thought neither God nor Mom would mind my improvisation.

I had learned to recite the rosary, a meditative Catholic prayer tool, when I was in grade school. As I recalled, the string of beads, anchored by a cross, guides one in a reflective practice beseeching the Virgin Mary to help one be closer to Jesus.

It had been a while. For me. Praying, I mean.

The first prayer is the Apostles’ Creed. It is said as one holds the crucifix where the beads are attached.

My limbs felt hot. Racking my brain, I forgot how it started. A 1960s pre-Vatican II version of the Act of Contrition burbled up.

“Oh my God, I’m heartily sorry,” I began, managing to recite the entire prayer. It wasn’t the Apostles’ Creed,” but maybe I’d earn merits for effort.

I felt calmer.

Moving into the more traditional prayers, I didn’t get stuck until the end. As a child, I never learned the final more complicated petitions, so I replaced those with heartfelt, extemporaneous appeals to ease my mother’s pain.

I repeated the improvised rosary multiple times.

Over the hours, Mom’s hands relaxed, her breathing smoothed, and her mournful cries to Jesus ceased. My voice hoarse, I watched over her as she finally slept.

God granted her a restful peace.

I eased back into the squeaky plastic-covered armchair and reflected on my mother’s faith.

She asked forgiveness for her sins and did penance. She supposed her transgressions were mostly minor infractions — certainly not enough to make one Hellbound.

For decades, prayer, churchgoing, and acts of service gave her solace and a sense of certainty that she was doing everything in her power to secure a place in Heaven.

My rosary-praying, Mass-attending devout Catholic mother also believed in palm reading, tarot cards and ghosts. Religiously sound or not, she looked at these disciplines as different windows into celestial mystery. Complementary, not contradictory.

Her early years in western Pennsylvania were filled with neighbors and relatives from the old country, Eastern Europe, where the mystical melded with the spiritual.

She learned to read palms from someone, somewhere. Sort of.

During my childhood, it was not unusual for a neighbor to drop by our farmhouse for a cup of coffee, a piece of pie, a filtered cigarette, and a palm reading.

Tucked quietly into the corner on a hand-hewn, L-shaped wooden bench, I would watch the reading unfold around our kitchen table, fascinated by Mom’s fingers.

She would sit across from her “client,” her outstretched hands slowly meeting theirs across the homemade plywood table.

“Let me see your hands. Hmm,” she would start meditatively. Her index finger delicately traced the lines of a neighbor’s calloused palms, her own equally work-worn.

Single streams of cigarette smoke rose from embers nestled in an amber glass ashtray. Red lipstick stained the filter. Her friends would be as quiet as church mice. Only the quick, soft tapping of a slippered foot on the speckled linoleum floor betrayed their nervousness.

Their faces held a certain reverence as they gazed hopefully into Mom’s calm blue eyes.

“What do you see?” each one of them would ask.

She would nod slowly, peering into their palm. Then look up. “You have some trouble coming in the future.”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes,” my mother would say, more quickly. “Someone close to you, maybe you, will be quite sick.”

Breathless now, the neighbor would clutch my mother’s hand, or their chest. “What is going to happen?” they would ask, face ashen.

My mother would put their hand down. Pat the top of it. Take a long thoughtful puff on her cigarette. Put the cigarette back in its place. Then look up at her friend.

“I can’t fully tell you. The lines are not clear. But in the end, everything will be fine.”

My child self was entranced. This is what Dorothy must have felt like in the presence of the Wizard! I would continue to watch. And learn.

Lifeline, head line, heart line, fate line. Each etching, mound, or contour had a meaning.

Over time, I realized that Mom had a lot of information about her friends and neighbors. Our telephone was a party line after all, and Mom was on it often. She never gave a truly ominous reading, even though she might have had insider information that pointed in that direction.

At the end, she always offered hope.

I knew the basics.

Later, as an adult at get-togethers, and perhaps after a few too many drinks, I would laughingly tell people I read palms. As time went on, even my children started informing guests that I was a palm reader.

Shockingly, many of my friends begged me to do readings. Many were professionals — physicians, attorneys, and executives. Training didn’t matter. They wanted their palm read. Their fortune told.

Even though they were living it.

“It’s a gimmick,” I would say, shaking my head. “No, I’m not going to read your palm.”

“Sure, yes, but, please, please, do it anyway,” friends would beseech me, sticking their palm under my nose.

I decided that I would never, ever give anyone bad news. I would always read out hope. Just like Mom.

Regardless of what the lines revealed.

One night, one of my colleagues was insistent. A group of us had left the main party to refresh our wine in the kitchen.

“Come on, Wendy,” she said. “Just a quick read.”

I felt woozy, which meant my guard had dropped.

“Okay, sure,” I said, putting down my glass and wiping my wet hands on a towel.

“Let me see your palm,” I said, taking her warm hand into mine. “Hmmm.”

For a moment, my eyes lost focus and I saw Mom’s frail hand in mine. She, taking her last breath. Me, spilling hot tears on the hospital sheets.

I shook my head. And paused.

“The lines are not clearly showing me what will happen in your life,” I said, slowly tracing the middle of my friend’s palm. “But they are suggesting that the path you are living on, etched by kindness and compassion, is the right one.”

“But what’s going to happen?” she asked, her cheeks flushed.

I put her hand down and patted it. “We all want to know that, don’t we?” I said.

That night, putting away my necklace and earrings, I spotted my childhood rosary nestled in the back of the jewelry box. White crystal beads strung on cotton with a silver cross.

The one my mother gave me.

For more stories about one’s mother, check out Pits and Grit or Good, Better, Perfect or Finder’s Keepers

If this story lingers, I’d love to hear more.