The wishing bone
by Alfonsina Betancourt
I was probably seven, full of curls, an easy smile, a know-it-all attitude, and an extravagance of energy that would drive my loved ones crazy. Today, with the practicality obtained as an adult woman and mother, I would not understand why my mother would drive to the other side of Caracas every Saturday just to go to a butcher shop. But back then, I did not question it. It seemed, in fact, like an adventure. I did not understand then if they had reasonable prices or had the best meat cuts, which was probably what my mother was after. I just remembered that we went to a very cool butcher shop every Saturday.
This place was far from ordinary. It had ample space with tons of bright Caribbean natural light filtering through the large window storefront, black ceramic tiles in the floor, mirror walls, and a huge center bar area where anywhere between four or six butchers would serve their clients from. Customers would walk around the bar where glass displays held all kinds of meats and pieces of animals I wish I could unsee. I would follow my mother around, probably skipping, while she chose filet mignons, pork loins, and all kinds of things I could not recognize. My artist eyes would delight in their texture and colors and how the butchers treated each client as long-time friends. Once we had made our first pilgrimage through the displays, it was time for my favorite part of the adventure: we got to sit on the swiveling barstools that surrounded the bar. At the same time, pieces of meat were cut following the client’s desires, conversations between customers and the employees followed, and the noise of knives being sharpened gave me chills all over my body.
Even with all the sensory information and all the stories I heard, I guess my very energetic body had a hard time staying still. I swiveled on those high chairs, knocked on the glass, and counted the customers. While cutting a chicken, the butcher probably noticed that my attention span had been lost, and I was at the point where I was either going to cause an accident or drive my extremely patient mom out of the store. He decided to intervene.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked me, holding a V-shaped bone in his hand.
I shook my head.
“This is a wishbone,” he added as if he was holding a long-sought-after treasure.
“What is that for?” I asked, my curiosity awakened.
He asked me to hold one side of it while he held the other.
“We are both going to pull this bone. The person that gets the bigger part will have a wish come true.”
I smiled, unsure if that was some kind of trick. The butcher insisted I held one side.
“Now, you need to make a wish,” the butcher in the blood-stained smock said.
I closed my eyes. I could have asked for a toy, for a good grade, or that my sister actually followed my orders for a change. I don’t even remember the kind of thing my seven-year-old brain desired. However, I closed my eyes and felt some fire in my heart, and then the thought came without any processing, without me summoning. It just appeared.
“I want to go to The United States,”
I thought. Until then, I had never been there, and I think it is safe to assume that my idea of The United States was a synonym of Disney World. And that is where I wanted to go, probably.
The following year, an unexpected opportunity emerged. My mom’s best friend and her family were moving to Georgia, and they invited my sister and me to spend a few weeks with them. It was a great learning experience. The three weeks we would spend In Ft. Benning quickly became two months. I learned what it was to live with another family, without our mom; what it was to go to a big shopping mall with lots of toys and pet stores that sold tarantulas; what a numbered exit meant on the highways; what a tornado alarm sounded like; what it was to check The Weather Channel on TV before stepping out of the house; what race tensions look like; how all soldiers with their buff bodies and buzzed haircuts look alike when running in the morning. I got to ride my first horse and see what Autumn leaves emerged at the beginning of September. We also got to finally go to Disney World, to be kicked out of the park only a few hours later because of the imminent arrival of Hurricane Helen. I got to see how palm trees bend with hurricane-strength winds and how the St. Agustin hotel, where we could find refuge, did not have any food to offer other than a salad with blue cheese dressing - quite a tragedy for the picky eater I was.
It, indeed, was a summer to remember. It seemed the wish I had made inside a butcher shop at seven had come true, and so I put the matter to rest. Then adolescence came, and with it, more dreams started taking shape. I started making plans for my future. I was going to graduate from college in Venezuela, and then I was going to move to Florence to get my master's and then settle for a few years in either Rome or Athens. I was not even interested in learning English because I was sure I would not need it. In fact, that was the only class I did not care about in school. So I arranged with one of my friends. I would supply my beautiful color-coded notes in exchange for her helping me memorize whatever I needed to get a good grade in English. As a bonus, she also offered flamenco classes.
And then, the universe showed up. I fell in love with someone whose dream did not match mine. In fact, his dream was the opposite of mine. He was moving to Boston to get his MBA. I tried to negotiate to see if he could get his MBA in Florence because if there was something I was sure about, I did not intend to move to The United States, but I failed in that attempt. So I gave him a conditional “I do.” I would only come if I got into a college of my choice with a good scholarship, meaning I had one year to learn to speak the only language I was not interested in learning. The universe would not let my stubbornness derail its plans because that was quickly achieved. And so we moved temporarily to Boston to get our degrees with the intention of returning to Venezuela later. The universe had a different plan for us.
That was almost twenty-four years ago. When we visited both of our schools, we drove from New York to Boston, and when we passed through Connecticut, I remembered it immediately felt like home. There was no scenic route nor a beautiful town where we stopped for food. It was literary a boring drive through I-95, but something felt right. We packed our few belongings in Massachusetts three years later, unknowingly pregnant with our first child, and we started living here.
Since then, I have become some sort of wish-whisperer. I don’t need wishbones or amicable butchers. But the lesson I learned that day had become my flag. People tend to believe that the universe, God, or any kind of superior force we believe in does not hear us. They do; in fact, they log all our wishes. Sometimes they become true the moment we stop wishing for them. Sometimes we don’t recognize them because we are so explicit that we fail to notice the “bone” of the wish. In the innocent, pureness of my seven-year-old soul, I only had to stop letting my brain do the talking; I had to let my soul speak freely. Those are the wishes that become a top priority in the universe. If we ask for a blue car of a particular brand that costs us a certain amount of money, the universe does not waste its energy on that. We, capable humans, can work for that. But if we ask for a vehicle that allows us to go on road trips where our souls can connect with others, the car makes its way to us effortlessly. If someone asks for a boyfriend that is 6ft tall, a particular color of hair, of a limited range of years, of a certain profession and specific cultural background, that enjoys a precise hobby…well, good luck with that. But if the same person asks for someone to love who can love them back the way they like and help them grow to their full potential, that person shows up. Because that is a wish that comes from the soul, not from the ego, and those wishes are extremely powerful.
There are 206 bones in the human body. We are full of infinite opportunities for our dreams to come true, especially when we are patient; no need to pull apart any of those bones. We are literally a galaxy of interlaced wishes waiting to be returned to the universe. Now, more than three decades later, I have learned that what made my wish come true was not the fact that I was left with the bigger part of the bone. It was the fact that, at that moment, I closed my eyes and just let my soul do the talking, the inquiry. My mind or my ego had nothing to do with it. In fact, years later, I had forgotten I once had a wish that led me to a destiny, to a path I had no idea was for me. And here I am, wishing that my stubborn, human brain does not interfere with whatever my soul desires. Hopefully, I would be wise enough to listen so that when my dreams come true, I recognize I have arrived home, even when home looks foreign and distant and quite impossible to get to. The universe is always rooting for us and willing to move mountains and part seas to see us reach our destination. Sometimes the path to our wish is not straight, but surely every detour and curve gives us the tools we will need at our destination.
It all starts with a soul-driven wish and ends with a grateful heart because regardless of where we are, we know the universe always listens and has our backs. Let’s all wish away and wait; it never fails.
