Seeing The Baby

It was about a year and a half ago, and I was doing a tarot card reading for S., who owns a local cafe. “What do you want to know about?” I asked her. After some prodding, she told me she really wanted to have a baby.

“Okay,” I said, and laid out the cards.

I think I’ve mentioned before that what the Irish call “the sight” runs on both sides of my family. My mother’s mother read tea leaves, my father’s father read cards. The aunts on my father’s side always have dreams when someone’s going to die (I do, too.) My sister also “knows” stuff.

I still remember seeing my nana in my bedroom the night she died. She didn’t say a word, just looked at me. When my mother came in to tell me, of course she ignored my insistence that I’d just seen Nana.

Anyway, anyone who’s been around me for any length of time knows this about me. I don’t think about it all the time, but sometimes I just get a feeling.

I told her I did see a baby. She then proceeded to tell me that as a lesbian couple, she and her partner tried to adopt but it was too difficult in Pennsylvania, they didn’t have the money, etc.

And as I listened, I knew that everything she said were strong, solid reasons for thinking there was no logical way in hell they were going to get a baby. “And yet, I see a baby,” I said, pointing to one of the cards. “It’s there, I can feel it.”

No, she said. They’d explored every option, there was no way.

“Have you told people here in the neighborhood?” I said. “Because I find it hard to believe that somewhere around here, there isn’t one person who’s pregnant and doesn’t want to have a baby.”

She looked skeptical. Hell, I didn’t blame her. I’d be skeptical, too.

But when I stopped at the cafe last week, she stopped me on the front steps and showed me a picture. “Cute baby,” I said, wondering if…

“She’s ours. We get her next week,” she said with a radiant smile. Turns out the baby was in the hospital detox unit; mom and dad were neighborhood addicts and mom agreed to allow S. and her partner to adopt the baby.

“We’re signing the papers tomorrow,” she said. “I mean, she could still change her mind for a really long time, but…”

I hugged her. Then: “Told you I saw a baby,” I said, poking her arm.

“Yeah, but you said it was a boy,” she retorted.

“Whatever,” I said. “Congratulations!”