My Mother, The Seer
“I wonder if we’ll see my Crystal Ball, today? It was on loan to another museum, last time we tried,” Mom teases as Dad takes curve after curve of the Schuylkill Expressway fast enough to make my stomach wretch. “Ouch!” Jimmy howls as I pinch his forearm, hard. It’s payback for calling me ‘Clod-Hopper,’ when I appeared in my Sunday-going-to-Philadelphia dress — a ruffled, floral number — and my white patent-leather Mary Janes.
“You had it coming,” I hiss, as he reaches over and grabs my wrists. That nick-name means war, especially since I’ve finally outgrown my awful red shoes with their super-thick, ugly soles. He knows my doctor prescribed them, I hate ‘Clod-hopper!’
“Stop wrestling, back there,” Mom commands, without turning around. “Remember what I told you. I don’t need my Ball anymore, to know what you two are up to!” We disentangle, reluctantly. My older brother and I are extra-antsy, eager to charge up the art museum’s majestic entrance, and more importantly, to make contact with Mom’s storied treasure.
Apart from the tedious ride, I enjoy our Sunday outings to The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Ceremonial Teahouse, a tranquil abode of bamboo and opaque paper, is a family favorite. I restrain my fingers and follow the artful stone paths through its serene rooms as Dad talks about Japan. Once we exit, I swing my arms and skip across the polished marble until we land at my personal must-see, The Armor Room. Child-sized knights speak to me under the soaring ceiling, tell of lives cut short by prolonged bloody combat. Of facing-off in the mud, weighed down by metal suits and helmets, and brandishing the strangest flesh-ripping weapons. Morning stars, flanged maces, horseman’s picks. The man catcher!
Medieval armaments disturb me, but I blame Dutch master Peter Paul Rubens and his massive Prometheus Bound for my recurring nightmares. His canvas needs a warning label; I can’t touch it, but the museum lets me walk right up to his writhing, muscular, totally-naked lightning bolt-stealer. The doomed, giant Titan strapped-to-a-cliff for all eternity while a monstrous, sharp-beaked raptor excavates and feasts upon his oozing cocoa-brown liver. My parents tell me the ancient Greeks considered the liver a source of life and intelligence. I just know I’m terrified of liver-torture. And that Rubens ruined Mom’s homemade pudding for me.
Once we’ve checked our coats, we usually mount the Grand Stair Hall together, pausing at a wide landing to greet lithe, gilded Diana. Bathed in light, the huntress balances easily on her gold ball, her bow staff outstretched. Today, Jimmy and I speed to the upper galleries, two steps at a time, ignoring Diana and our parents’ hushed admonishments. We sail past intricate tapestries, unattended. Zoom under stone portals and archways, and around big-eyed nose-less kings and crumbling winged creatures, before we breeze into the East Asian collections to locate Mom’s prize. A 19th Century, Chinese Quartz Crystal Ball.
Jimmy and I are on a mission. We’re anxious to test Mom’s magic Ball and uncover her true relationship to it. To poke holes in her fantastic account and determine if Mom’s been exaggerating, or fibbing about, her fortune-telling abilities.
“I never told you that beautiful one belongs to me,” she’d whispered, the year before, as we marveled at her shining Ball — the world’s four largest specimen, at over thirty pounds. “I lent it to the museum, for a special exhibit,” Mom insisted, pulling us close to confess what we never imagined. “I can read the future. It was a secret, until today.” She told us she’d kept her globe away from our prying eyes when we were younger, hiding it under the eaves of our dark attic. And gazed into it daily when Jimmy and I started wandering beyond our fenced-in yard and getting into mischief.
We were fully on-board with Mom’s soothsaying claims, until her latest one. She reports arising from a nap with an all-consuming headache. Her head tingled as the pain subsided, so she explored her scalp with her fingertips, but found only a few tiny, tender bumps. Mosquito bites, she thought. When her bedroom grew cold and the chills overtook her, Mom realized it wasn’t a migraine or mosquitos — she’d received an astonishing supernatural gift, while she was sleeping.
Her Crystal Ball lives in Philadelphia for everyone to admire, because our mother can track us and predict our brewing shenanigans without it, her recent story goes.
“I see it!” Jimmy squeals, pointing to the brilliant sphere perched high on undulating waves of molten-silver. Racing to it, elbows out and forgetting our museum manners, we discover it glowing from within, as if to greet us. With Jim flanking me, I extend my hands and let them hover just above its transparent icy-surface, like a TV fortune-teller. Stretching out my words, I ask “where is your home?” Receiving no response, I repeat my conjuring with more gusto, sealing my eyelids and shaking my head. Mom rushes over before my third go-round. Her operatic “Rebecca Ridgway, you know better!!” rouses the day-dreaming guard from his corner chair.
“I didn’t touch it!” I protest. My full name spells trouble, but I can’t resist a brash follow-up. “If this one is yours, why don’t you tell it to answer me?” My tall father steps away from a case of jade carvings to intervene in our unruly theatrics. Crouching down, he issues his unspoken warning, the look that stops me in my tracks. I stare at my now-scuffed Mary Janes, my cheeks and forehead aglow, wishing I could divine my own fate.
After an uncomfortable silence, Dad returns to the jade, leaving gentler Mom to reign us in. After untangling the object’s wordy provenance, I proceed with my inquisition. “The card doesn’t mention you, Mom,” I exclaim. “It’s the Crystal Ball on Waves, the gift of Major General and Mrs. William Crozier. Given in 1944.” Smiling my sweetest smile, I turn and scrutinize her pretty face and baby-blues for a tell — for a small twinkle or raised brow — but she gives me nothing.
Jimmy and I confer. The placard’s intriguing, but it doesn’t totally undercut Mom’s narrative. We rise up on our toes and take turns peering into the Ball’s infinite center and imploring it to release its secrets.
When Mom tugs on my sleeve and nods at the impatient grown-ups gathering near, my brother and I give up. We’re out of clever ideas, ready to visit our chain-mailed crusaders and brave another meeting with mammoth Prometheus and his juicy liver. Our next mission is a tricky one. Jimmy and I need to read up on paranormal activity, and borrow a flashlight, magnifying glass and Dad’s Polaroid camera, before we even think about sneaking up on our napping Mom and searching for proof of her SUPER-human feature. I’ll muss up her hair and snap photos, as he examines her scalp for subtle changes. All without awakening or angering her. Risky business, for another day.
We’re subdued on the journey home; there’s no pinching, kicking, or name-calling in the back. Jimmy — who somehow still craves Mom’s chocolate pudding — forgets to taunt me by requesting some for dessert. Our parents seem to have forgiven our rude performance; we don’t dare beg them for a pre-dinner Dairy Queen cone.
I climb into bed tired and deflated, but ultimately relieved to end my weekend with Mom’s improbable, delightful legend intact. Mothers are annoying, but they can surprise you. Mine brings people to tears, fills a cathedral with her soaring soprano. She sight-reads Chopin and Cole Porter without missing a note, whips up dazzling sky-high birthday cakes, and creates a fluffy breakfast treat out of our day-old rice. Maybe my Mom can read the future!
My days of slamming doors and demanding privacy are arriving fast but, for the moment, I’m happy believing that Mom used to keep me out of trouble by consulting a precious artifact she stowed up on our third floor.
And I’m certain she possesses a tiny pair of all-seeing all-knowing eyes, somewhere on the back of her head.
Mother’s Day 2020: In honor of my 92-year-old Mom. I hope she’s using all the magic she has during these strange and unsettling days of quarantine.
