Luck

I often tell my daughter to look at things from an opposite side. Just as an "unlucky" adventure in Oliver Jeffers' book What's the Opposite can turn out to be a lucky event. Who knows? How about the female figures hidden in the famous picture of The Beauty and the Hag? Make sense?

A lot can happen when you think you've had bad luck.

My daughter's school field trip was cancelled last Friday after the weather forecast of thunderstorms. I cancelled my leave, too. And that wasn't so bad. I ended up with more time to finish my PowerPoint slides for my lecture next day. My daughter had her usual school day because of the bad weather, and invited her classmate to come over after school. By the time I'd got home, my daughter was in tears. She cried because her friend was throwing up. With high fever. I cleaned up the mess and told the two little girls that it sounded like a bout of viral illness. I figured that out because her classmate's brother had just had similar symptoms three days ago.

It wasn't a day I'd like to have had it been my choice, but it wasn't.

When I heard that my daughter's field trip was rescheduled this Tuesday, I wasn't sure I should take my a whole day off. I felt I should take a half day off, with the busy afternoon clinic session in mind. At about the same time that I first broached the idea of half day off, my thought returned to the viral illness. I counted my finger to estimate the time my daughter would get sick, just in case she caught the germ from her classmate. I caught my breath. "It makes sense to take the whole Tuesday off," I said to myself slowly, "I will take care of her - in case."

Perhaps because of my sixth sense, or perhaps by luck, I made the right prediction. My daughter ran a fever in the middle of her field trip today, when I was with her. Thank God.