Palm Reader

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

My mother was a devout Catholic. Ironically, she also loved to read palms — mystical future telling carried out by interpreting the unique lines and folds of a seeker’s hand.

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, agitated plea hammered out a throbbing refrain: “Jesus, why have you abandoned me?”

I had no answer.

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

Praying for peace

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 distorting.

Mom grimaced. Was it the 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.

“Okay, 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 the humming of a floor polisher. It was annoying.

I needed a rosary. Looking around her bed, there was 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.

The rosary is a meditative Catholic prayer tool. Each bead represents a specific recitation that includes different prayers recited in sequence, mostly comprised of the “Our Father,” “Hail Mary,” and “Glory Be.”

The purpose of this reflective practice is to respectfully beseech the Virgin Mary to help us be closer to her Son, Jesus.

Mom believed in the power of rosaries, and each of her five daughters was given one as a special gift. Mom was also a big Mary fan.

This would be helpful for Mom, I thought.

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

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

My limbs felt hot. Racking the deep recesses of 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. I managed to recite the entire prayer. It wasn’t the “Apostles’ Creed,” but maybe I’d earn merits for effort.

I began to feel 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 pleas 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, she finally slept.

God granted her a restful peace.

Lines of the heart and of life

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 hell bound.

For decades, she had provided service to the Church and others. Called indulgences, these gifts in service of the Lord were what I considered to be extra credit points applied against sinning.

The acts of prayer, church going, and indulgences 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 firmly believed in the occult, the supernatural and yes, even ghosts. She looked at these as different windows into celestial mystery — complementary, not contradictory.

Her early childhood in western Pennsylvania was filled with neighbors and relatives from the Old Country, someplace in Eastern Europe where the mystical melded with the spiritual.

Somewhere, from someone, she learned to read palms and tarot cards.

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

Tucked quietly into the corner of our kitchen L-shaped wooden bench, I would watch the reading unfold, fascinated by Mom’s hands.

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

“Hmm,” she would start meditatively. Her fingers delicately traced the lines of our neighbor’s well-worn working hands, her own equally calloused by manual labor.

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 face held a certain reverence as they gazed hopefully into her calm blue eyes.

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

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

“Oh, no!”

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

Breathless now, our neighbors would often clutch my mother’s hand. “What is going to happen?” they would ask, faces paled by dread.

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 okay.”

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.

Life line, 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 intel that pointed in that direction. At the end, she always offered hope.

I learned the basics by watching and added a few additional skills from books. I realized that the knack in crafting a good reading lies not just in knowing the meaning behind each card or palm line. The reader also gleans insights from questioning and observing the subject. They also use the understanding that there is a commonality across most people’s lives. It helps to have a high EQ.

At parties, as a conversation starter, I would laughingly tell people I read palms. As time went on, even my children started enlightening 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 in dissent. “No, I’m not going to read your palm.”

“Sure, yes, but, please, please, do it any way,” friends would beseech me, sticking their palm under my nose. And sometimes I would.

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.

What matters most

As I sat with Mom over what were to be her last days, I thought about the desire to connect with the spiritual and mystical within us. And of one’s fervent desire to know the future.

How magical it would be to see into the future and face ours with certitude.

We crave certainty. We want happiness. We long to make the right decisions. Or to avoid pain. Or to find love.

So, the question we ask of fortune telling is what. What will happen in our life?

I believe that may be the wrong question. The more insightful one is how? How do we live our life? What path do we choose? How do we craft a future with meaning? In a world of curiosity. Surrounded by love.

Those are the right questions, I think. The ones I try to ask myself.

I don’t know what my future holds. Even with prayer, Ouija boards, palm reading, and cups of tea leaves, no one does.

My mother prepared for heaven. But that is not what sustained her. It was her daily acts of kindness, her relationships — particularly with family — and her constant support of others in need.

I never read my mother’s palm. In the end, I didn’t need to. She lived her life without the fortune telling. And it was a good life filled with wonder and adventure and love.

And I don’t need my palm read. I have a path to follow that her hands traced expertly.