Page 353 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

on a chaotic system. Her desire to control the fates sprang from the
same helplessness that makes the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive

team more superstitious than its offensive team. Psychologists

speculate that this is because the defense has less control; they don’t

have the ball.

Women like my mother never had the ball. She died when I was 15, 8
leaving me with deep regrets about what she might have been—and a

growing understanding of who she was. Superstitious is one of the

things she was. I wish I had a million sharp recollections of her, but

when you don’t expect someone to die, you don’t store up enough

memories. Ironically, her mystical practices are among the clearest

impressions she left behind. I honor this matrilineal heritage—and to
symbolize my mother’s effort to control her life as I in my way try to

find order in mine—I knock on wood and do not let the moon shine on

those I love. My children laugh at me, but they understand that these

tiny rituals have helped keep my mother alive in my mind.

A year ago, I awoke in the night and realized that my son’s window 9

blinds had been removed for repair. Smiling at my own compulsion, I

got a bed sheet to tack up against the moonlight and opened his

bedroom door. What I saw brought tears to my eyes. There,

hopelessly askew, was a blanket my son, then 18, had taped to his
window like a curtain.

My mother never lived to know David, but he knew she would not 10

want the moon to shine upon him as he slept.