My husband deemed it necessary to tell our daughter I am actually a Gypsy Queen who knows magic potions and spells. Now Isabella won’t stop pestering me for my secret recipes, and since I don’t have the heart to tell her the truth, I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“What specifically would you like to know?” I ask, and she tells me she wants to learn a spell that brings good luck. Well, wouldn’t we all.
“That requires very rare ingredients,” I say, “and is kind of an advanced spell. You’re too young.” She accepts that, and leaves it alone for a while.
While I am annoyed with my husband and his weird stories (can’t he just read her a book like other, normal, parents?) I also envy her the power of unlimited imagination. Wouldn’t it be nice to believe in a world full of magic, populated by elves and witches, where anything is possible and there’s an answer for everything? So I decide to do some research. One good luck spell, coming up. Frankly, I could use some luck myself; my heat isn’t working, it’s 55 degrees in the house and my fingers are so cold I can barely type. Maybe I’ll find a spell that makes the repairman show up faster.
The Internet shows me site after site; with names like Everything Under the Moon and Lucky Mojo they offer me love, riches, and happiness, as well as some seriously bad poetry. Not all are free, I find good luck spells that range anywhere from $60 to over $100; apparently, they are meant to bring good luck to someone else and leave me poor.
I doubt I’ll ever be tempted to send my hard earned money to some anonymous Gandalf-wannabe, and so I click away.
I find some simple ones that require candles and chanting, but that seems too obvious. Then I stumble on something called the “good luck herb jar”. That sounds like fun; we could put some herbs in an old jelly jar and place it in my daughter’s room. Pretty innocent, except for the fact that it asks for 27 different ingredients, and where does one get Queen of the Meadow, or Sacred Bark? And what is the going rate for Frankincense? What the hell is a Mojo Wish bean, anyway? I find one spell that is simple and straight forward, doesn’t require any accessories, and can be chanted under a full moon. However, it is so riddled with typos that I doubt it will do anything; or is that on purpose? Does the magic still work if I spell “hidden” with two d’s? Another site tells me I can throw a pinch of salt over my left shoulder three times, accompanied by a short request to replace bad luck with good. Easy enough, no need to wait for a full moon, and salt I already have. Maybe we’ll try that one tonight.
When I start considering buying a spell book on Amazon, I give myself a reality check and log off. After all, if any of this stuff worked, why would there be so many used copies of Gypsy Magic for sale?
Maybe she’ll forget all about it without me crushing her spirits and telling her I’m very un-magical. After all, isn’t this merely another version of the age-old “my-dad-can-beat-up-your-dad” phenomenon? The need to believe in the infallibility of the parent has caused her to swallow whatever nonsense her dad feeds her, and I can just wait it out. In a few short years, she’ll be a teenager, and she won’t think me capable of tying my own shoes, let alone brewing potions to ward of the unpleasant. Still, I should check the cupboard for salt. You never know.
P.S. We tried the salt-over-the-shoulder thing. Then my husband’s car broke down twice in the same week ($900 total!), my son had a bad reaction to the chicken pox vaccine, my daughter refused to do her homework for 4 days straight, we woke up one morning without heat (inside temperature: 54 degrees), my washer started leaking, and the fire place stopped working. Needless to say, this spell did not exactly work, but we’ll keep looking.
