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The Chair in the Courtyard
When I met my friend Rose she’d been a window for several years. She spoke lovingly about her late husband Bob and I soon learned he’d been her second husband.
One day over lunch Rose and I were reminiscing about our past lives and she told me this story.
She’d been very young when she married the first time, and she and her husband lived in a one bedroom apartment on the 11th floor of a small building, their windows facing a lovely courtyard.
After the birth of their first child they needed more space and planned to stay in their building but move to a larger apartment on the 9th floor that had recently been vacated.
But when Rose’s mother heard their plan she worried. ”It’s bad luck to move from a higher floor to a lower floor in the same building.” she told them.
Rose held no such superstitious beliefs, the new lease had been signed, and the movers hired. But to placate her mother Rose asked what they could do to ward off the bad luck.
“Take a chair from your apartment, bring it down to the courtyard and sit in it. Then bring it back upstairs.” her mother instructed. And as silly as they thought that was, they did it.
As I laughed at her story, Rose looked serious for a moment. “But that apartment did bring me bad luck – we divorced.” she said.
“But since then you’ve surely had your share of good luck as well.” I said.
And Rose smiled, “Yes I did, I met Bob!”
Rose’s mother, we agreed, had been right about that chair in the courtyard after all!
– Dana Susan Lehrman
Dana Susan LehrmanThis retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com
Thanks for the smile. So glad there was a cure for the bad luck (interesting—never heard the story about moving to a lower floor or the chair remedy), and thanks for the reminder that sometimes what seems bad can open a better chapter.
Yep, all good Khati!
Is that an exclusively NY superstition, about not moving from a higher floor to a lower one? Around here nobody lives in apartment buildings with more than 2 or 3 floors (“garden apartments” I think they are called). Anyway, I love the idea of counteracting the bad luck by putting a chair in the courtyard. What if the building doesn’t have a courtyard? Apparently Rose’s building did. And did it bring her bad luck or good? I guess it depended on whether the second husband was better than the first one.
Ha ha Suzy! Good point, so it’s a superstition for apartment-dwellers only who are moving within the same building – who knew! And if no courtyard apparently you bring it down to the street!
The good luck was meeting the second husband who obviously was the keeper!