“Abracadabra”

She was magic. Everybody knew it.  What captivated people was her irresistible personality, her razzle-dazzle looks and the charm she emoted which mesmerized and bemused even the non-believers so they forgot completely about their concerns and objections.

She was a schoolteacher. Her principal let her teach first grade year after year, where she thrived and was cherished. Even though she never had any children of her own, she really understood them. She knew how to listen. Listening to children is not the same as listening to anything else in the world. Children say what they have to say without words, mostly. To get children to use their words the world has to be just right. It has to feel absolutely safe.

She knew how to talk to children, too. And I mean really “talk”. There was no beating around the bush with Marguerite Noel. When she was around you could “say it like it was” without the familiar critical cloud hanging over you. This created an atmosphere of protection and freedom where you could let your true nature out to find your voice.

I didn’t have her as a teacher in school. She lived and taught in another little town. I got to be with her on holidays, though, because I was lucky to have her as my very own Great Aunt Marguerite. My cousins, siblings and I would crowd near a window—watching-- in anticipation of her arrival for Easter dinner. Uncharacteristic loud high-pitched cheers would erupt when her car appeared and we’d all run out to welcome her.

She was my grandmother’s youngest half sister and there had to have been at least 20 years between them. She felt young to me---more my mom’s age than my grandmother’s.

That really doesn’t explain it, either. Actually, she felt ageless. I suspected that she lived in a timeless world where the perception of age didn’t matter.

She had style and pizzazz. She always wore a large brimmed hat tilted just slightly to the side. She carried a pair of gloves in one hand and clutched a thin purse close to her body.  Unlike the other women in the family, she wore make up and had a faint scent of lavender perfume. Her accessories were meticulously coordinated with some snazzy outfit complete with a pair of fantastic shoes. She loved shoes so much she married a man who fixed them. Uncle Bob, who we adored too, would show up looking dapper in his white Panama hat and 2-toned shoes, dressed to the “nines”, as well.

The two of them would arrive at our dull and boring family reunions with attitude. We would always look predictably the same: Uncle Glen in his plaid flannel shirt and overalls, Grandpa in his white shirt, grey pants and blue tie, Grandma, my Mom and her sisters in their Sunday-best frocks covered with full aprons and us kids in our nearly- outgrown church clothes. Why did they want to spend the day with us?

They had class. There was a charge between them, unlike all the other couples who didn’t even want to sit next to each other at the long table. Bob and Marguerite weren’t afraid of this magnetism. They clearly adored each other and when their eyes met you could feel a spark and see a slight blush brush across their cheeks. Their connection felt like the most natural thing in the universe.

They stood out in a distinctive way. To me, as a child, it was as if they had stepped out of a fantasy book. Not a book you would find in just any library or on one of the bookshelves at my house. The way they looked and talked gave the impression they were not even related to us. They moved among relatives with charisma looking each one in the eye with a sweet word and a wink.

Aunt Marguerite would cast her spell as soon as she walked through the door. Her big brown eyes, with long lashes and eye shadow, illuminated with delight when children came into her sphere. She would open her arms for a hug and talk to you as if you were the only person on the planet. If you stood very still when she was near you could hear your brain cells harmonizing and rising to a higher pitch. Your physical body practically jumped out of its skin at the mere sight of her. Emotions lost their doled drum heaviness and vanished into instantaneous happiness. She was the most amazing wheel of fortune, ever!

She would make a big deal with the adults about the seating arrangements for dinner. Each holiday she would volunteer to sit with the children in the kitchen to “make certain they don’t run amuck or get too loud”, she would explain. We all knew her hoopla was just a show to conjure up in everyone’s minds just how much she loved us. We couldn’t contain our giggles as she took the chance and negotiated on our behalf. Her dramatic spectacle bedazzled and charmed us all!

During dinner we heard the adults in the next room making small talk, when there was actually nothing to say. Eventually they would land upon the weather and farmers’ gossip—which with any luck lasted until the end of their meal. At our table, however,conversations were animated and fun. Aunt Marguerite would not even have to coax us to tell our stories. Stories we didn’t even know were in us would come tumbling out merely because she was there. We would laugh so hard milk would run right out of our noses.

After the meal, dishes washed, dried and put away, old clothes on and men sleeping in front of the TV as football players dodged tackles, we kids tiptoed down the dark hall and gathered around a small table Aunt Marguerite had set up in a back bedroom. A black velvet cloth covered the rickety card table giving an air of fascination and illusion. Sheer curtains were open just a little so a few light beams filtered through casting shadows on her face. It was just dark enough to put a sense of the heebie-jeebies on what was about to happen.

She sat behind the table. We waited on pins and needles until she spoke a low, quiet “abracadabra”, when tarot cards would appear with a slight of her hand. She shuffled the deck like a Las Vegas dealer while emoting passionately about the symbols on the cards and how she was going to use them to predict our futures. It seemed incredibly mysterious! I hadn’t even thought about my future since last Christmas when she had shape-shifted her alchemy into those cards and cast the unknown upon us. Now, my future was about to materialize in front of my eyes again with the hocus-pocus those cards were about to reveal.

Each one of us kids got a “reading”. I found myself holding my breath every time 3 cards were pulled and placed in a row in front of us. Then her unbelievable smoke and mirror stories started and went on and on and on, hypnotizing and holding our wide-eyed attention with unspeakable wonder. We clung to each thought anticipating astonishment. Her gypsy spirit did not disappoint as she embellished and lingered on every word. Our imaginations cast us right over the precipice into the worlds beyond.

 

Suddenly, in the palm of her hand a black fortune-telling ball appeared. Answers to our questions floated to the surface at the bottom of the ball and cast a mysterious aura. She extended the ball slightly away from her body, adding to the illusion of prophecy.

By the time the Ouija board emerged everyone was sitting on the edge of their chairs, the little ones resting their arms on the table in anticipation. She had been bewitching us with the Ouija board as long as I could remember. Each time it appeared we were taken closer to some way-out apparition. Who would she choose today to reach into the beyond for an answer to their burning query?

Out of the blue, our mothers call us back to this world, breaking the spell. Our desserts are ready. We file toward the kitchen in silence, too delirious to care about what ordinarily would have brought us racing. For, you see, Great Aunt Marguerite introduced us to the world of Spirit. She uncovered Universal secrets, revealed unseen truths and brought to light symbols larger than life that disclosed their meanings in a mysterious language. In some all-seeing way she had summoned an awe-inspiring image of Paula that, though dreamlike, was undoubtedly “me”.

I clearly remember breathing deeply, pondering questions I had never thought of before and smiling in awe as she drove off in their fancy automobile. Great Aunt Marguerite had graced the day and her presence continued to drape around us like a silk cloak. Full of wonder, we silently looked into our futures to the next holiday when we would enter her world of enchantment and magic again.