This past
year has had its ups and downs for me, but truth to tell while the ups have
been lovely, they were few and mostly far between, while the downs have been
pretty low. There are years like that
in one’s life. I don’t really blame my bad moments
of this past year on the number thirteen, but I have to admit it crossed my
mind. Several times.
I am not
among them, but there are serious triskaidekaphobics in the world. I met one once at a dinner party in a
beautiful house on a hilltop in that paradise called The Chianti. Around the table were twelve people
enjoying the beauty of the food, the wine, the setting. The guests were friends of my hosts and
members of a rarified social circle of old Tuscan families. Between the main course and dessert, a
grandson of the hosts dropped in to say hello.
His grandfather and I moved apart and made room for the young man to
pull up a chair and join in. As soon as
he, the thirteenth person, sat at the table, a local doyenne at the other end
popped up, and holding her white linen napkin to her breast, made a face as if
she had been threatened with a lightning bolt. She refused to be among thirteen people
sitting at a table.
This variety
of thirteen superstition is based on the Last Supper. It is an insult to seat
thirteen around the table because it implies that one of them will turnout to
be a traitor. There is also the fear
that one will soon die. I say
"Poppycock," but evidently the lady with the napkin thought differently.
The host had no choice but to banish the beautiful young man to a corner of the
room.
Other
superstitions about thirteen predate the birth of Christ. There was a myth about the code of Hammurabi
(1780 BC), that the thirteenth law had to do with the death of the seller
before a sale was consummated.
Oh,oh! The number thirteen is
associated with death.
In
ancient Persia, they thought that the constellations of their twelve-month
Zodiac would each rule the planet for a thousand years, and then in the thirteenth millennia the world as we know it would
collapse into chaos, which, I suppose may yet happen, but there isn't much time
for that in what remains of 2013.
Then
there are old Norse myths in which the thirteenth god, Loki, arranges the death
of Balder, the son of Odin. And the
brother's Grimm made it the thirteenth fairy who wickedly cursed Sleeping
Beauty at her baptism ceremony.
At the
end of the Nineteenth Century, high level Americans, beginning with a group of
New Yorkers, decided to fight the superstition, especially as it surrounded the
fear of Friday, the 13th. Soon there
were Thirteen Clubs throughout North America, where thirteen members met on
every Friday the thirteenth in room thirteen of a hotel at 8:13 PM. Five US Presidents beginning with Chester A.
Arthur up until Teddy Roosevelt were members.
They didn't make much headway. “Thirteen” still sounds like bad
luck. For instance, there are still many
buildings--offices and apartments-- all over the US that skip the number 13 when
numbering floors. Does it occur to
people who live or work on the 14th floor that they are really on the
thirteenth?
I myself,
do not blame any of my difficulties of the past year on the number
thirteen. I am however looking forward
to 2014. Fourteen seems to me so much
nicer a number, optimist that I am.
We have a
new community tradition in New York. I am writing this on New York's Seventh
Annual Good Riddance Day. We celebrate
it by going to Times Square, taking along bad memories of the year, represented
by pieces of paper--CAT scans, Dear John letters, foreclosure notices. There is a shredder in the square where we
can consign the bad news to oblivion.
What a great way to symbolically jettison the past and look to the
coming year with hope.
So my
wishes are for all of us. If your 2013
was like mine, not one of your favorites, I wish for much better days ahead for
us both. Even if it was a banner year
for you, I hope 2014 will be twice, three times, ten times as good.
Happy
2014!!!
Annamaria
- the LAST Monday of 2013
