Monika was presented to me many summers ago on the Italian Riviera by a couple for a leisure palm reading in order to boost her sagging morale from the unpleasant news of her imminent deportation. Already in her late 30’s, she told me about her doubt and apprehension that she would never marry because she wasn’t attractive and rather too old to become a mother. Physically, she looks far less as the stereotype of a tall blond Polish girl than an African, being a product of a fling between a black student and a white local girl. Unfortunately, she was abandoned immediately after her birth because her mother disowned her when she saw how black and ugly she was.

When I took her hands for a reading, I felt instantly how anxious and sad she was. After a few minutes of examining her palms, I looked straight into her eyes and told her with a sincere smile and conviction that she’d meet somebody before the end of the year and they would have two children. At first, she was so surprised to hear what I said and didn’t believe it right away that she took it for a joke.

A year later, I saw the couple again on the beach and told me that she met somebody during a family Christmas dinner and they had fallen in love with each other at first sight and had already scheduled their wedding the following fall. I met her with her husband two years later and told me that she had a miscarriage. I reassured her however that she would have her first child in due course. Then the following fall, she finally gave birth to a son, whom she named Tomasso, and two years later, a daughter, Malvina.

¶ 1:23 PM