That Thirteen Something

I don’t have a lot of superstitions. I find black cats adorable, broken mirrors are just a mess to clean up, and I could step on a sidewalk’s worth of cracks without screwing up my family’s spines any worse than they already are.

But I have to admit, I’m getting a little edgy about the number 13. Or to be more accurate, about 2013.

Something in this year has it in for us.

Granted, Heather and I have gone in for long streaks of bizarre luck at times. Our honeymoon, for example, was marked by a torrential downpour that washed every “Just Married” inscription from the car, a Mexican restaurant that left us both ill, and a local bird population that repeatedly mistook my wife for a bombing range. You know, the usual.

But this last January … well, where do I begin?

There’s the back I strained (though thankfully not outright pulled) while helping my sister-in-law move to Lakewood. Naturally, work was missed.

There’s the flu that bombed Heather and Missy just as I recovered from the back strain. Naturally, more work was missed.

Then, of course, the flu jumped to me after three straight days of caring for Heather and Missy. Naturally … ah, you’ve heard that one.

Having the bathroom pipes leak through the kitchen ceiling added a bit of spice to my own bout with the flu. (Rain on the kitchen table gives a home such atmosphere, don’t you think?) And I shouldn’t leave out the joys of getting Missy the antibiotic she needed to speed her own recovery … only to discover she was brilliantly allergic to the medicine in question.

Have you ever seen a young woman turn into a human strawberry? I really don’t recommend it.

The irony is that I used to dread Februaries, the half-forgotten tail end of the winter season. Now, I’m leaping into the month like a welcoming bath after a long day.

It’s got to get better – right?

The funny thing is, the belief that “it’s got to get better” can be a big part of making it better. There’s been a few studies of lucky or unlucky people over the years and they seem to reach the same conclusion: more often than not, the lucky make their luck.

“Lucky people are certain that the future is going to be full of good fortune,” said writer Eric Barker, himself citing researcher Richard Wiseman. “These expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies by helping lucky people persist in the face of failure, and shape their interactions with others in a positive way.”

In other words, people who look for the best, even while undergoing the worst, tend to find it. They don’t give up.

The idea reminded me of the Lloyd Alexander fantasy novels I read as a child, where the character Llonio the Lucky kept his nets on the river and his eyes on his surroundings and was able to reclaim all sorts of odd objects as a result – all of which proved to be useful, once a little imagination was applied.

“Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer,” he tells the main character at one point. “But don’t forget to put out your nets!”

My own nets have caught a lot of wonderful things over the years – a good family, a good job, friends I love and value. (Still no $3 million dollar fortune, alas, but I suppose you can’t have everything.) And if there’s been one good thing about this latest streak of trouble, it’s been that it let me spend more time with Heather and Missy, maybe even catch some quiet in the midst of chaos.

After all, nothing that hit us was irreparable. Nothing happened that couldn’t get better. And that’s pretty lucky, too, now that I think about it.

Even so, I may keep a careful eye out this year. Just to be thirteen – uh, I mean, certain.

Sigh.

Well, there goes February.

The Luckiest Number

 There aren’t many folks who’ll welcome a 13 into the house.

Our city’s planners didn’t. Why do you think we have Mountain View Avenue?

Garth Brooks didn’t. The man once skipped directly from track 12 to track 14 on a CD, filling the 13th with a few seconds of applause.

Baker’s dozens, skipped hotel floors … the list goes on and on. Call it superstition. Call it tradition. Call it seriously unwanted.

At least, until it reaches my doorstep.

At Chez Rochat, the big 1-3 is more than welcome. Come on in. Make yourself comfortable. Come back anytime.

After all, how many people are going to turn down a 13th wedding anniversary?

That’s right. On July 25, 1998, a skinny young man with hair that would not stay down said “I do” to a kind and beautiful lady and heard her answer back. Well, mostly heard her, over his own hyperventilating.

These days, the hair has shed, the waist has spread, and the breath has reached a more regular rhythm. But the love has remained the same. And with every passing year, I’m reminded just how fortunate we are.

Well, maybe fortunate’s not exactly the word. Every marriage takes a lot of work, ours no less than any. But every time I see a friend blink and congratulate us as though we’d just hit the diamond anniversary, I can’t help feeling there’s been a little bit of luck, too.

I’ve been lucky to find a woman who would stay calm during her husband’s epileptic seizure. Who smiles at his rampant geekery and tolerates his reporter’s schedule. Who hasn’t yet executed him for leaving his tennis shoes in the middle of the living room.

Given her own soapbox, I guess Heather might say the same about a husband who held back her hair when Crohn’s disease turned her stomach upside down, or who greeted her Sailor Moon fixation with an amused grin, or who nodded and said “Yes, dear,” when she adopted a small army of birds to join our parakeet Sharpie. (Yes, the Rochats now have their own air force.)

But luckiest of all has been that we both believe in this. That we understand a marriage is more than just “a wedding and the other stuff.” That there are fun days and hard days, but no days that aren’t worth trying just one more time.

In a society of seven-year itches, maybe that’s the best fortune of all.

On our wedding day, my grandma gave the two of us a bit of advice. “If you can make it past the first 30 years,” she said, smiling, “the rest is easy.”

There’s a long time left to 30. But standing here at 13, it doesn’t look so imposing as it did. Not here at this point, where, as Heather puts it, our marriage feels both brand new and as though it had always been.

Thirteen.

Wow.

Call it what you will. But it’s definitely not a wrong number.