December 26, 2003

As you can perhaps tell from the fact that I’m writing this, I survived my Christmas trip into the wilds of New Jersey.

E.S., his sister, my dog, and I drove for about two hours–which is to say that E.S. drove, my driver’s license having expired months ago, and just as well, really, given the number of car accidents I caused when I was driving–to get to his parents’ house on the Jersey shore (where they had recently moved from Iowa).

This is the second time I’ve ever met a boyfriend’s parents, but the first time can hardly count, as it was the parents of my ex, N.T., and I met them in the waiting room of Bellevue Hospital, where N.T. was having surgery–he was having surgery in the hospital, that is, not in the waiting room–and the terror of meeting each other was second in all of our minds to the terror that somebody would accidentally remove one of N.T.’s limbs. Which, in retrospect, would really have been doing the world a service, but that’s neither here nor there.

In any case, E.S.’s parents were, thank God, utterly wonderful and generally unintimidating people. His father looked at me for a few moments in such a way as to fill me with anxiety–you know, the kind of look that can be communicating either “I think you’re a fine match for my son” or “I can see right through you, you fraud” but you can’t quite tell which–but then luckily my dog A. jumped up on him, both melting his heart and shielding me from further scrutiny. Then I complimented E.S.’s mother’s furniture, and all was well. The whole thing was as traditional a Christmas as one could want: we talked about the weather, we ate hors d’oeuvres, we looked at embarrassing pictures of E.S. as a child, we ate Christmas dinner, we opened presents, we ate pie, we talked about the real estate business they were opening, we pulled out their custom-made Ouija board and contacted their spirit guide.

E.S. had suggested that this might happen. Apparently, it’s the job of this entity–who is known, by the way, as “28”–to greet the recently deceased upon their arrival in the afterlife. However, he’s also very interested in the spiritual progress of those of us who have yet to shuffle off this mortal coil; he’s been sharing his insights with E.S.’s parents (and, through them, with E.S. and his sister) for almost 30 years now. His communications while I was there were concerned partially with E.S.’s parents’ failure to talk to him in a while–it had been some five weeks–but mostly with E.S.’s sister’s path in life. He gave her what seemed to me to be a lot of really good advice.

At one point, somebody asked me if I had any questions; of course, there were any number of things I was dying to know, but somehow I couldn’t quite see my way through to asking about them, especially as many of them concerned the first-born child of the people wielding the planchette. So I said, “No, nothing in particular–though if 28 has anything to say to me, I’d be happy to listen”; I hoped thereby to get some good advice while circumventing the awkwardness of asking questions of a cardinal number.

Twenty-eight, however, saw right through my ploy; he bade me welcome and told me to read the transcripts of his other communications (which run, evidently, to some 1,500 typed pages) so I could get to know him better. Then he went back to castigating E.S.’s parents for neglecting him for so long, and then eventually those of us who live in New York piled into the car and went back there. (I’m figuring that 28 is more or less omnipresent, so, though I met him in New Jersey, he probably lives in New York too, and was almost certainly in the car.)

This was, in fact, the second communication I’ve ever received from the spirit world; the first was the time in high school when I went to a meditation group and somebody channeling St. Catherine of Siena told me I was an old soul and that I had to develop my psychic powers.

Clearly, the lesson here is that I should avoid all communications with entities from the beyond, because first they will tell me things of no use to me and then they will give me homework.