A Very Scary Marry Chart

An Astrologist, Palm Reader, and Numerologist Told Me I Would Suck at Marriage; I Ignored Them at My Peril

A student in high school got really into astrology. We were in the dusky hills of Mount Diablo, in San Francisco’s East Bay area, and I remember her handwriting: printed, in pencil, loopy, curvy all over. A classic (smart and) blonde California girl in the mid-1970s, she traced out astral charts by hand, decades before the internet. I asked her if she would do one for me. She said yes.

I don’t remember anything from that chart but the horrifying (to me) proclamation that my first husband would “die a tragic death due to serious illness or injury.” I was mortified. I argued with her—couldn’t she be wrong?! She insisted the stars don’t lie, they say what they say, it wasn’t revisable. Period.

A few years later at Reed College in Eliot Hall, the admin building, I stared at fliers posted on corkboard, reading about a grief-related group. Suddenly, my whole body grew tense and sweaty, hot. That dead-first-husband astrological prophecy remembered, a sickening vision of myself as a young widow dripped over me, hot and steamy. I felt a widow’s grief in my bones and veins for a long moment. A longtime feminist and  charter subscriber to Ms. (at age 12), I was still a product of the heteronormative ‘60s and ‘70s. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than gaining a spouse and losing him. Countless ills filled the world, but I wasn’t yet 20 and blissfully unaware of all the ones that yet threatened.

Fast forward another few years. My paternal grandmother encouraged me to have my numerology chart divined by a woman who had done hers. “She is so sharp and right on!” Granny said. (This is the same foremother who, at 65 in the 1970s, had begun a raw food and wheatgrass health ranch on a stately avocado grove in San Diego. It still exists. What can I say, it was California in the ‘70s+.)

I paid $35 for the woman to translate my name and birthdate into numbers and prophesize from there. She typed her impressions into a manual typewriter; carbon paper and onion skin, single-spaced, complete with strikethroughs for typos. In numerology, numbers evidently carry various “vibrations.” She wrote about these vibrations in different areas of life. There were sections for my professional destiny; social, financial, family, personality, etc. I got high marks (high vibes!) in every area. 

Except the puny marital paragraph:

Marriage Chart

Your Destiny Vibration here is reduced from the Spiritual Master force to its lower frequency under which you do not have a stable marriage potential - you are apt to be impulsive and in your desire for companionship could make a poor choice of a mate. The Key Vibration is also not a positive potential for a successful marriage as it is a warm and loving force, attracting the opposite sex, but you are apt to love many rather than any particular one, and there is indication of divorce under this vibration.

Well, damn. This was not not looking or feeling good. I gnashed my teeth as I had after the horrible astrological portents, and told myself I’d use force of will to overcome any silly woo-woo forecast from numbers in my birthdate or name.

A few years later, I took a break from delivering babies full-time at a teaching hospital and did the traditional backpacking-through-Europe adventure. I was 26, and living with the man who would become my first husband. (He cheated on me while I was on that trip, but a couple years later, I’d marry him anyway.) 

In Amsterdam, I stayed with a Dutch woman I’d met at a hot springs during Oregon’s Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh era. When I visited her in Amsterdam, a friend came by who studied palmistry. Evidently, I hadn’t learned my lesson (or was hoping for better news?). I asked her to read my palm.

She agreed, stretching out my hand, smoothing it gently with her thumbs, as though she could clear away detritus and reveal the true story. Her touch felt good, soothing. Then she proclaimed, among other augurs, that I was to have several husbands. 

Why did this keep coming up? It couldn’t be right. I could have and do what I wanted, romantically or otherwise, yes? (Or so my young, naïve, and privileged voice insisted.) One man for life, perfect and Endless Love (à la the then-popular Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie song). What the heck had happened to free will?

The power of denial is, well, powerful. I went on to completely “forget” all these marital predictions. Until my late 50s, when I exhumed and decluttered old papers and found these now antique documents. 

The thing is, those predictions pretty much came true. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve married and divorced three times. I divorced my first husband more than 20 years ago; a physician who at 68—supposedly in great health and certainly knowing better—dropped dead of a preventable-with-standard-healthcare heart attack on a bike ride. The second husband: A former counter-terrorism policeman from a Middle Eastern country (what was my first clue he might see violence and aggression as a solution to conflict?). And the third? A seemingly redeemed, former drug-addicted bank robber who, in prison, found AA, yoga, and meditation, and was the clean and sober poster child for local nonprofits helping ex-addicts and felons. All great, all good. Except that “redemption” completely fell apart as soon as marijuana was legalized in our state. 

The numerology chart divined “poor choice of mates.” Absolutely. “Impulsive.” That’s pretty clear too—diving in at once, trusting men without true evidence of trustworthiness. “A warm and loving force”? People have dubbed me warm and loving (and a force!) my whole life, I’m proud of that, at least. And “Loving many rather than any particular one”? Hmm. Not so sure. Unless you’re counting serial monogamy and my tendency to leap before looking. Then, undeniably yes.

My last separation and divorce ended more than five years ago. Since I first married, that’s the longest I’ve not been in a relationship. Hallelujah! It’s not that I don’t want to be with someone. I date. And then date some more. Scores (solely numerically, not the way you’re thinking!) of coffee dates; one or two a month, then moving on to the next. 

Maybe it’s due to a quiescence of hormones that were crazy-making and wreaking fertile havoc when I was younger. But I like to think of myself as in recovery from a falling-in-love addiction. I hope to fall in love some time. But it would take a pretty unusual man to be worth giving up my singlehood. Someone independent but companionable; self-assured but committed to self-reflection and growth; loving and kind; bright, with a life, and purpose, of his own.

Who knows? Did I mention that the Amsterdam palm reader said something about a relationship in my 80s? I scoffed then but, 40 years later now, I wonder. I think she predicted it would be the best relationship yet. 

Until then I’m grateful. For family, friends, and plenty of love to go around. 

It’s a good life.