More than just words

I really wanted to know how Grandma Luda's "magic" worked. What was her secret?

My grandmother never parted with an old green book, either a prayer book or a collection of spells. Sometimes I, too, would flip through it mindlessly.

It seemed to me that, as in the fairy tale of the old magician Hottabych, I would say three times: trah-tibidoh-tibidoh, clap my hands, and then a miracle would happen. But no miracle happened.

I asked my grandmother to teach me her spells, trying to eavesdrop and repeat her word for word, but Grandma Luda just laughed: "Don't be like a parrot. It won't work, because it's not about words.

But she never explained what it was about.

She always waved it away: "You don't need to know. In time you'll understand. Or maybe you won't. It's up to you.

Before I left for Nizhny Tagil, my grandmother gave me some notebook pages written in her beautiful, ornate handwriting.

They were prayers - Our Father, Hail Mary, and others.

"When things get difficult or trouble comes, pray," she said. - But pray sincerely, from your heart. Otherwise, prayer will not help.

I pushed the pages deeper into my suitcase. There, at the bottom of the suitcase, they remained for all three years of my studies. I don't remember using them once.

But I didn't throw them away. When I returned to Glazov, I hid them in the closet.

Bless and save us

Many years have passed since that time. My sister Tanya was about to give birth.

As soon as she became pregnant, I knew she would have a son.

As a child, I often dreamed of a little boy who would be my son or nephew. And here I felt it, it was him!

The ultrasound showed a girl, but I stubbornly insisted on a boy.

During another examination, the doctor told my sister that she would have a cripple. This doctor supposedly saw on the monitor that the baby had no legs. Or rather, there are legs, but they are very small, underdeveloped. So she told Tanya that it would be better to have an abortion so as not to torture herself and the baby.

Is it necessary to describe the sister's condition after such words? She looked awful.

My mother was hysterical when she heard about the baby without legs. She cried into her pillow the whole night. Mom thought the doctors knew better and that Tanya really should have an abortion.

But despite her fears and pressure, my sister refused to take the life of her child.

Tanya was a week away from giving birth, and the doctors were becoming more and more intimidating: her tests were bad, and there was not enough amniotic fluid. And in general, it would probably be necessary to induce labor artificially and have a C-section. There's no other way.

That's when I remembered my grandmother's prayers. My grandmother was still alive, but she had been bedridden for five years.

I found the yellowed pages in the closet and rushed to the maternity hospital.

There was no doubt that this was the time when prayers would come in handy. They would help, they would protect. I believed with all my heart and tried to share my confidence with my sister.

I remember standing with her at the window in the empty hospital corridor. I passionately urged a pale, confused Tanya with a huge belly to take the pages and read them, to pray every day - until the birth.

- Everything will be fine, you'll see. Don't listen to anyone. Listen only to me! - I said over and over again, like an incantation.

I wanted everything to be all right, and I knew it would be! No matter what. And my sister believed me. She gave birth on her own, without a C-section.

It was a boy. Oleg. Healthy, beautiful, with normal legs. It was probably a medical error, but I think the prayers helped - at least to calm down, not to panic. As for the pages, they got lost somewhere in the excitement.

But I was not particularly upset. They had served their purpose.

To laugh or to cry

Many of my grandmother's treatments seemed strange to me, to say the least.

I remember when I was ten years old, I had a stye on my eye. Vishnevsky ointment and strong tea lotions did not help. Then my mother took me to my grandmother's house.

My grandmother was busy in the kitchen at the stove and came out with a kitchen knife.

At the sight of this huge knife, I felt a shiver run down my spine - I thought she was going to cut my eye.

But my grandmother reassured me that I didn't need any treatment, that it would go away on its own.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Grandma Luda disappeared into the kitchen, but not for long. She sneaked up behind me, turned me around by the shoulders, and quickly spat in my sore eye.

It was so unexpected that for a few seconds I could only open and close my mouth like a fish. Everything inside me was boiling and churning, but no matter how hard I tried to tell my grandmother everything I thought about her, I couldn't say a word.

I wiped the spit from my face in disgust and rushed to the bathroom. I hadn't spoken to my grandmother all day - I was very angry with her. I don't know whether it was the help of the "folk remedy" or my mental shock, but by morning the stye was gone.

Rag Therapy

My grandmother used to treat cuts with an old, dirty dishcloth.

Any medical professional would be sick at the sight of this unsanitary situation, but the scratches healed surprisingly quickly after "rag therapy.

My grandmother also cured fear and stuttering in children. When my cousin was frightened by a neighbor's sheepdog, he began to stutter badly. His parents traveled to several clinics, took him to the best doctors, all to no avail. Then my grandmother started putting my cousin under the table and smoking him with dog hair. She drank him with liquid oatmeal, whispered and read spells for several days. After these sessions, my cousin began to stutter much less.

Big Bang

When we lost something in our house, my grandmother used to tie a bow or a string around the leg of the table and say: Devil, play with it, but give it back.

Amazingly, the thing was always found right away! Sometimes it turned out that the keys with the glasses were in the most conspicuous place - on a shelf or a bedside table that had already been searched several times. And how do you explain my grandmother's ability to predict the future?

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- Are you really a witch? - I asked her once.

My grandmother laughed and said, "You made that up!"

But I didn't. Especially when, in the middle of the night, a sealed bottle of soda exploded by itself in the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment. It shattered! There was a big commotion: Why did that happen?

At the risk of injuring ourselves, my cousin Sveta and I crawled under the table and tried to determine the cause of the explosion. My cousin remembered her physics lessons at school - she said that this phenomenon could be explained scientifically and that she had read about it somewhere.

But my grandmother, after removing the fragments, calmly said

- Sveta, physics has nothing to do with it. Shura died, she sent a message.

And sure enough, the next day a telegram arrived from Balezino: Aunt Shura, the wife of my grandmother's brother, has died.

Bad Luck

One day I decided to ask my friends if they believed in omens.

It turned out that they did, and a lot.

One of them, a journalist, was afraid of the Lenin monument near the Palace of Culture "Russia". On his way to the newsroom, he passed the stone leader of communism and began to notice: if he passed Lenin on the right, the day would go well, if he passed on the left, trouble would not keep him waiting.

As for me, I'm afraid of spiders. If I find a spider in the house, I double my vigilance. For me, a spider is a very bad sign - I will quarrel with someone, or I will face trouble at work or in the family. And the bigger and scarier the spider, the more serious the problems will be. To avoid or alleviate them can be one way - to kill the furry creature.

It sounds silly, but it works.

Expecting a guest? Take out a knife

My sister, for example, believed in the luck of knives and forks.

Tanya loved big crowds and loud parties. Spending the weekend at home, without friends, not going to the disco was like death to her.

On Fridays, the phone in our apartment would ring nonstop.

But sometimes there was a sudden lull: in the summer many friends went away, someone might be sick, someone was busy - in short, there was no one to hang out with my sister.

On such days, Tanya smoked nervously on the balcony and looked at her watch.

Ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, midnight - the phone was silent. Maybe it's broken? No, it's fine. Something wrong with the bell? We checked it, it's fine too.

Unwilling to accept her fate, my sister would run into the kitchen, grab knives and forks she found in the cupboard and throw them on the floor (there is such an omen: a knife will fall - a man will come, a fork - a woman). So Tanya used to scatter them all over the kitchen.

Surprisingly, the omen always worked!

More than once, I witnessed guests appearing on the doorstep almost a few minutes after the knives were thrown. They just appeared out of nowhere!

And the most amazing thing was that there were always as many guests as there were scattered knives and forks! I don't know how my sister did it.

One time Tanya threw nine knives and forks on the floor at once. Well, tell me, where could such a large group of people come from at midnight in a sleeping small town? But...

That night our cousin Sveta and her friends were returning from someone's birthday party. They saw the light in our window and decided to visit us. There were nine of them! They drank beer, listened to loud music and laughed.

Tanya was happy. The neighbors and I were not.

Boo!

As I see it, the root of all superstition is fear of the unknown.

It's this fear that makes us put rituals around us like shields.

Take Friday the 13th. On that day, superstitious people try not to leave the house, and if they see a black cat, they spit over their left shoulder and hurry to the other side of the street, or wait for someone else to cross the invisible "bad luck" line.

I am not afraid of black cats, but I have often seen them waiting for their victims.

And not just anyone, but always a certain person!

After crawling out of the alley, such a cat would sit down somewhere on the corner of the street or take a waiting position in the bushes. She was very calm.

People passed by, many people, but the cat paid no attention to them. She could sit like that for five minutes, half an hour, an hour. But suddenly her behavior changed. With perked ears, the cat stood up and threw herself at the feet of "her" victim.

A game of chance, you say? Not at all! The cat's action was not spontaneous. It waited. It waited long, purposefully, patiently. And it waited.

And who, as a child, saw a black car and didn't grab the button on the dress? If you don't grab it, it's bad luck. A thread stuck to the dress - a guy is hitting on you. Black thread - brunette, white - blonde. Mom slapped your ass - for good, she gave you the groom by that, younger sister slapped your ass - it's for bad, "junior in rank" take away your grooms.

Forgot something at home, came back - look in the mirror. What for? Just do it.

Gypsy house

One day a gypsy house caught fire in our yard.

The girls and I were nearby, collecting pebbles at the "Rovesnik" youth club, where workers were covering the roof with colorful mosaics.

These beautiful blue pebbles with silver veins had just been brought in, and they were scattered everywhere - on the sidewalks, on the ground, even in the grass.

After putting the "gems" in our pockets, we ran to look at the fire.

And then my neighbor Katya said:

- The pebbles of the one who looked at the gypsy fire are cursed. Whoever brings them home will have a fire!

The girls got scared and threw the pebbles away. But I took mine home and hid them under my bed. I lay awake all night wondering if Katya was right.

In the morning I couldn't stand it any longer and threw the "treasures" off the balcony.

Later, the treacherous Katya confessed that she had made up the whole story about the pebbles, that there was no gypsy curse. But we believed her!

It is impossible to hide behind an imaginary shield when doubt bemires the soul and you continue to believe in a curse, a black cat, a woman with an empty bucket. The movie "The Skeleton Key" shows this very well.

A lucky coin

When we were kids, Grandma Luda forbade us to pick up money on the street. She said we'd lose more than we'd find. And if the coin turned out to be incanted, it would be a disaster.

I was an impressionable child, and for a long time I shied away from any change on the sidewalks. But now I actually enjoy finding coins.

I think it's all about how you handle it, whether you believe in bad omens or not.

If you're looking for money for profit, waiting for newlyweds near registries and churches, setting up ambushes at fountains - that's one thing. Greed has never served anyone well.

For me, it's a game. I don't go looking for coins on purpose. But when I find them, I spend them or put them in the piggy bank. And when it's full, I use it to buy sweets.

Legend has it that the billionaire Rockefeller also picked up coins from the ground.

He even had a cane with a suction cup on the end so he didn't have to bend down.

The richest man in the world used to joke that he wouldn't be a billionaire if he didn't pick up loose change on the street.

And he's right, people don't realize how much money is under their feet! The richest "catch" - three dirty and wet hundred roubles was waiting for us right on the forest road.

Coins are often left on the doorsteps of shops, near bus stops and ticket offices. People are in a hurry, lose change and are too lazy or didn't have time to pick it up, maybe they think: a penny is not money.

Surely it has happened to everyone: on the bus or in the shop it suddenly turns out that an even amount is missing only one ruble. So you have to change a hundred, and then you go around rattling the coins in your pocket. But if you had a ruble...

I have found shiny and rusty rubles on fishing trips, at the movies, in children's playgrounds, on the side of the road, and even in the middle of busy streets.

Lots of lost change on beaches.

Perhaps you have heard the story of the gold coin of the Master of the Livonian Order, Gotthard Kettler? It was believed that there were only two such coins in the world: one was in the Hermitage, the second - in Stockholm, in the hands of a private collector.

But a Dutchman found a third. And where did he find it? In the sand on the beach!

At first he wanted to give it to a historical museum for a song, but then he put it up for auction. The poor museum folks didn't have enough money to buy it. So keep your eyes open, maybe you'll get lucky.

Money underfoot

But as I said, the excitement of chasing money and greed are bad advisors.

If you succumb to them, start fumbling deliberately with your eyes on the ground, the coins will immediately hide from you. But at every step you will get deceptions - beer caps, cigarette foil, chewing gum smeared on the asphalt, spit...

But if you relax, the money will literally rain down on you.

Sometimes, on vacation abroad, we found twenty dollars a week. We spent it on the Internet.

And once in Egypt, my husband went out at dawn and found a whole pile of dollar bills on the lawn.

The night before, a big Russian company had a party - with songs and dances in the moonlight. Our compatriots were celebrating their departure for home.

Andrei collected green bills, counted them - twelve dollars. We gave it to the janitor as a tip.

At the airport

Bangkok. We are in a hurry to get to the airport. I get into a taxi and notice some coins on the floor next to the wheel. But I'm too lazy to bend down and pick them up.

At the airport I go to buy water, I look at the price tag - two baht missing!

All my Thai money is gone and I don't want to exchange dollars for a bottle of mineral water. Oh, how I could use those coins now....

Maybe I'll try to find some coins at the airport? I walk the halls, nothing. The Thai cleaners wash the floors so clean you can see them like in a mirror.

I was about to despair when suddenly something glittered under my feet. A baht!

Where can I get another one? Then I remembered we'd been to Thailand a few years ago. What if there was a random coin in the depths of my wallet? I looked in one pocket, in another, and - would you believe it - along with the old French franc, I found the baht I needed.

To be continued