wish

Last week and this week I have been in the Big Apple, visiting one of our magazine publisher clients to do some training for them. This client has a magazine that is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary, and because of that there is a ton of fun swag to be found all around their office. The swag includes a small tin filled with a unique salt and spice mix, a mailing tube that contains a scratch-off map so you can show off all of the places you've visited, and a large paper ice cream cone wrapped in cellophane.

They were kind enough to let me take some of these items, and when I got home Friday night I immediately opened up the ice cream cone to see what was inside (as it obviously was not real ice cream or just paper). The contents reminded me of a carnival - it was filled with little toys, like a fake mustache, and fortune-telling things, like a magical plastic fish and a "cootie catcher" (remember those?). It also included wishing items - a small, smooth stone and a piece of tissue paper, which you write a wish on then roll into a tube and burn like a candle, so that your wish can float into the heavens and (hopefully) be granted.

This got me thinking, which I'm sure you know by now is not always a good thing. There are many occasions throughout life where we are required or asked to make a wish... Blowing out candles on a birthday cake, blowing the seeds off of a dandelion, blowing away a fallen eyelash, to name a few (on another note, why does blowing and wishing go together so often??). For the past several years, whenever I was asked to make a wish I always wished for the same thing. I could have wished to win the lottery or perhaps, in general, have a happy life, but instead I wished for this one thing: healthy children.

Now, I very well could have just jinxed myself if you believe in superstitions, but I felt this needed to be shared. Healthy children. That's it. One thing (or, I suppose, multiple things if I have more than one child). You know what? My child was healthy. He was perfect. If my pregnancy continued I can only assume that he would continue to be healthy, be born healthy, and lead a normal life. You could say that my wish (so far) has come true.

But.. what good is a wish for healthy children when your healthy child dies from an unnatural cause? Apparently whatever force is governing these things decided that my wish wasn't good enough, robust enough, specific enough. It reminds me of a friend who was a dungeon master for the role-playing game dungeons and dragons (yes, the geeky side is coming out). There was a point in his game where you could receive one wish - any wish - but it was up to the dungeon master to decipher this wish and determine how to grant it. This is where things got tricky - if you wished for immortality then he would most certainly transform you into a rock. Rocks don't die, right? So you were forced to create a wish worded so perfectly that there was no way the DM could misconstrue it.

I feel that in order to have my wish come true the way I want, I need to add qualifiers to my wishes now and word them like a legal document. I wish to give birth to a healthy child that is born alive at or around 40 weeks gestation, who has no genetic abnormalities, who lives a long, healthy life equivalent to the average lifespan of an American male or female.... oh and I'd like to live through the birthing process as well and also live a long, healthy life... yikes. I'm sure there's more I should add. Do you think this would work?

I don't think there are enough candles on my birthday cake for that.