The fantastic in the mundane

Introduce a fantastical element into a story that describes a mundane event in your life.

    Coinky-dinkys as my darling daughter expresses it or blessed synchronicities add the fantastic to the profane. They happen often and add meaning to the mundane.  I’ll describe my typical fantastic phenomenon. My crotchety Grandma Morton had already alienated most of her family and friends because of her nasty backbiting trivia. Always in pain she refused medications, natural or pharmaceutical. She saw it as God’s will, her retribution and her personal purgatory; her willing suffering would somehow help her get into heaven faster when she passed.

     I suggested Reiki because the Bible accepted laying-on of hands in sincere prayer. I certainly was not going to explain to her its origins from Japan via Hawaii and the cash I had paid to get initiated. All I wanted to do was to hold grandma’s pain and breathe with her and hopefully help let go of her infamous ANGER. She was in her 80’s and convinced God would take her anytime, preferably now. She refused to get rid of her decrepit old furnishings, threadbare carpet or the dusty curtains. She sat in her old urine-musty smelling chair and I sat on a pillow on the floor,  rubbing her feet and  weeping, varicose legs carefully. She still wore those horrid orthopedic shoes worn out long ago but unable to throw them out, confused because her specialist had retired. She did not know where to get another specialist or the shoes. Her feet felt stiff with callous, cracks and crumpling toenails. Her little gasps responding to my slight pressure was music for me. The old lady was actually smiling, relaxing, and joking.

     I washed my hands and moved onto her shoulders and head. Silently she leaned back and allowed me to do the deed until I felt her lighten up, muscles melt into a defenseless bag of bones. I led her to her washroom so she could get ready for bed. The reflexology and craniosaccral along with Reiki had turned my bitter, fault-finding Grandmother into a sweet old lady. Impressed with my touch, compliant and silent she shuffled down the hall to her bedroom.

     I let myself out, got into my car, turned on CBC radio and prepared for the drive home to Cambridge. As I listened to Ideas, Lister Sinclair was interviewing my Reiki Master, Loni  from Salt Spring Island, BC. This was in 1987, Reiki was not popular and I was enchanted, smiling as CBC had once again reconfirmed my status in the universal flow of meaningful events.